The Stretch in the Strings
by Le'letha
Summary: A tangle in time and reality. Battousai was killed ten years ago? So what's Kenshin doing here and now? If something isn't done, Kenshin and everyone around him will fall victim to the warp in the weft.
1. I Am Become Death

**_The Stretch in the Strings_**

_**Le'letha**_

**Summary: **A tangle in time and reality. Battousai was killed ten years ago? So what's Kenshin doing here and now? If something isn't done, Kenshin and everyone around him will fall victim to the warp in the weft.

**Disclaimer: **My inability to draw and limited funding prevent me from owning the rights to this wonderful manga.

**Continuity:** Post Kyoto Arc, pre Jinchuu, which has been shifted forward in time to make room for this.

**Author's Note: **This story stems from too many readings of _Q-Squared _and an angsty midnight-insomnia image that I wanted to draw; that of a mortally wounded Battousai dragging himself into a darkling woods (poetic) to die alone. By the way, _Q-Squared_ is a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel that chronicles what happens if you take two omnipotent beings, three roughly parallel universes with three parallel ships and crews, and the Multiversal Center of Chaos, toss them all in a blender, and press 'Maximum Puree'. It's brilliant. That being said…

**ON WITH THE SHOW!**

"…_I leave it to you. What would you like to do this fine day?"_

"_I want to understand."_

"_Understand what?"_

"_Everything."'_

"_Everything…? Everything as in…?"_

"_Everything as in everything."_

"…_Very well then… everything it is."_

"_And what shall we do after we understand everything?"_

"_Die, most likely._

_-from Peter David's _Q-Squared

**Chapter One: I Am Become Death…**

_The past alone/is writ in stone. –Anonymous _

_The paths of all are defined by the threads that trail behind us with every step we take through time and space. The length is infinite until death, telling the stories of our fates without writing them themselves. They tangle with others and so change their course. At the crossroads in our lives, they wind around the turning points that hold them in place so a man's life may be traced by the places where his thread holds tightest. Even the strongest soul may not unbind a thread once it is tied tight. Once a thread is bound, it is bound forever; therefore the past may not be changed…_

Ironic, really. He was looking out from the other side of the glass now; instead of being the attacker, the ghost in the darkness, he was on the defensive. As one used to being a hunter, he felt hunted, although he could sense no one and nothing amiss.

Ahead of him, a single torch burned low, lighting their path. Senses open fully, hyperalert, he could smell the ash and sulfur that kept the sullen flame burning, hear the crackle of scorching wood. It flickered, casting shifting shadows on stone walls, slightly damp with the night's condensation and the autumn showers that struck unpredictably, pattern-free. The only warning before five to thirty minutes of light rain drifted lightly down was heaviness in the air. He rather thought it would stay dry tonight; certainly they would reach the safehouse without being drenched. Although the air weighed heavily on him, he couldn't smell the rain.

There were other weights to carry, other burdens to bear.

Along with the ash and the smell of the city, a wisp of blood floated on the breezy night air that made his long hair toss slightly. Reflexively, he subtly checked no one was watching, then raised his left hand to his cheek, reassuring himself that if it wasn't just a figment of his imagination, it was merely a residual scent, soaked into either the cobblestones or his nerves over time. His face had healed quickly.

Correction. The scar no longer bled outwardly, but the cross remained burned in red on his left cheek and in fire and darkness on his soul; a darkness that would consume him if he let it.

Never.

Kenshin's skin prickled. He knew he was being watched, he also knew who was doing the watching. He was willing to hazard a guess as to why he was being so closely observed. He also didn't care.

Not that it would matter if he did, as even the Ishinshishi's prime swordsman couldn't really go up to one of their leaders and say, 'Stop staring at me'. However, maybe if he put it a little less bluntly, Katsura Kogoro would stop. So he felt guilty for putting him into the situation that had ultimately done a good job of nearly destroying him body and soul. So he felt guilty for bringing him into the war at all. So he had either forgotten or was choosing to ignore the little fact that a fourteen-year-old Kenshin had, in fact, volunteered.

It was still making Kenshin nervous, and a nervous swordsman was one step short of jittery. One could simply not be an effective guard under the adjective of 'jittery'.

Still devoting most of his attention to his continual sweeps of the area, he stepped slightly closer to the taller man in the center of the group.

"Is there a problem, Katsura-dono?" the small red-haired swordsman asked quietly, his voice carrying no further than a few feet. His perfect poker expression remained firmly in place, determined not to reveal his uneasiness.

Katsura looked rather perplexedly at him. "Not that I am aware of; would you disagree?"

"No, sir," Kenshin replied, then paused, and added, "but you will be the first to know."

"I appreciate that, and your work in protecting our troops."

Kenshin acknowledged the compliment with a curt nod and moved back to the perimeter before his superior could give him any more praise. It would ultimately lead back to feelings of guilt over resolving to leave the Ishinshishi once their victory was certain. That would end up with _why_ he was still with them; that was the perfect route to the void within him. He knew that if he got too close, poked the wound too many times, it would swallow him.

The brief conversation failed to lift his ominous feeling. Refusing to chalk it up to paranoia, the dismissal of such having almost gotten him killed at least once, he remained on guard.

_Dammit all!_

Why tonight, of all nights? For all he could tell, there was nothing special about tonight's guard duty. The Choshu clan's latest intelligence indicated no Shinsengumi patrols in the area tonight, yet Katsura had insisted on their prime swordsman accompanying the small party.

Maybe he wasn't the only paranoid one out there. Well, definitely not.

The attack came with little warning, and he had no time to gloat over being right, which he rarely indulged in. His body reacted before his mind was still processing the new arrivals.

The Shinsengumi had changed their patrol schedules. Again. In the last half hour. They were getting faster.

Kenshin didn't even think, leaping into battle on automatic. His sword sliced through air to strike flesh while he analyzed what was going on.

As he spun, sword not even hissing through the air to provide a warning, he counted fourteen soldiers in light-blue jackets with the all-too-familiar jagged motif on the sleeves, backed up through both ends of the narrow street. Two were already slumping to the ground in puddles of their own blood, Kenshin's lightning-quick speed having taken them down. With an increased amount of casualties due not quite only to the Revolution's 'dragon', the Wolves of Mibu were drawing from less and less well-trained candidates. The rookies didn't often last very long, forcing the Shinsengumi to fill the newly reopened gaps with even more rookies. Since Kenshin had returned to the city, they hadn't been able to get ahead, barely keeping up in the struggle to keep up the ranks that the former hitokiri was steadily depopulating.

Katsura and his new aide were already fleeing from the scene of the battle, the former forbidden to raise his sword due to an oath sworn in exchange for the command of the young redhead. The other Ishinshishi guards flanked them in their retreat, giving Kenshin's Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu a free field that he intended to use. He'd learned to kill in empty back streets like this, and avoided making a scene in the open daylight hours. He was not only all too recognizable, with his distinctive red hair and cross-shaped scar, but because he hated to cause collateral damage.

Armed with only his katana, shorter wakizashi remaining sheathed at his belt, and this snapshot analysis, he covered his superiors' retreat. Acting more on instinct and the hard-gained second 'ki' sense of a skilled, experienced swordsman than sight, the samurai called Battousai by most of the warriors in the revolution, and other, harsher, things by those of his enemies that survived and their commanders, launched into a deadly whirlwind of bright steel.

A blade hissed by his ear, missing by a hairsbreadth, and he didn't even turn to see whom he was under attack by, sweeping back and under his arm to cut down the inaccurate swordsman. With a large number of opponents spreading out to enclose him on four sides and his commander's safety assured, he began to look for ways out of the street and into hiding before a shrill whistle—there it went—alerted other human wolf-packs to the melee.

Kenshin shook his head, clearing the disorienting ringing that the echoes of the whistle had caused in his sensitive ears. His red hair flew out of its tail, falling around his face, but he had no free hand to push it back as he fended off an overbold threesome, fatally wounding one but only scratching the other two due to a correction in mid-strike to avoid another attack.

It was definitely time to cut and run. If they'd established perimeter guards on the rooftops, he would be in more trouble, but from his guesses, they hadn't really been expecting to run across a Choshu party, much less one of the three leaders—and the dragon—himself. If he could get off the ground, they'd be left snapping at only the night air.

Gathering himself for a leap, he set his sights on a second-floor window, ledge jutting out over the street just enough for him to gain purchase. With that achieved, he planned quickly, he would be able to get to the roofs, and the Shinsengumi would never be able to track him there.

He never got to the first ledge. As Kenshin launched himself into the air, a sword cut through the air at a speed none of the rookies would have been able to achieve in a hundred years. Although both his assailant and Kenshin had miscalculated, one for the strike's distance and the other for his timing, the razor-honed blade dragged down his left arm, scoring a long gash from his shoulder to just beyond his elbow.

Allowing himself one strangled gasp, Kenshin dropped to the cobblestones and rolled, catching the blue-coated soldiers by surprise. They scattered to both sides of the street as the swordsman advanced on the redhead, who crouched against one wall, blood dripping down his left hand, which he supported himself with. The other hand clung with a death grip to his katana.

The smaller swordsman glared daggers at the tall, lean captain, who returned the stare implacably. Wordlessly, Kenshin rose to his feet and prepared for battle, ignoring the twinge of pain from his arm. It wasn't his sword arm; he could endure it.

"Captain," Kenshin said after a few seconds, inclining his head slightly.

"Battousai." Saito Hajime, captain of the Third Unit, wasted no words, falling into his famed—but rarely described, due to the unfortunate deaths of the witnesses—Gatotsu stance, feet planted in the blood of his own troops with blatant disregard. The losses were becoming standard, and duty would be honored later. It was well known to both Choshu soldiers and Shinsengumi troops that Saito would like nothing better than the Revolution's dragon spitted on his sword blade…knowing Saito's ruthlessness, probably roasting slowly over a bed of coals.

Unsettled, as always when face to face with the captain with the wolflike eyes, Kenshin moved forward slightly, disliking the feel of the wall at his back. He had the most chance in the open, where his agility and size would give him the greatest freedom of movement. The two swordsmen had rarely clashed—although often enough to give the two a profound dislike of each other—but they had crossed paths often enough to know that each was a formidable match for the other.

Spreading his senses out to check for anyone else that might be nearby, a shudder ran down his spine. A second _ki_ signature split the night, and this too was both ready for battle and wholly familiar, not to mention approaching fast.

All this in the span of a heartbeat. Not an instant later, Saito lunged, katana shooting out like lightning. Kenshin leapt to meet him, blades crashing to scatter sparks across the gap between them, and all the breath left his body as a heavily booted foot slammed into his gut, throwing him backwards, which at least got him a few feet away from Saito, who had only lowered his boot to the ground to push off in a second lunge.

Now almost frantic to escape, with the second _ki_, that of Okita Soshi, the Shinsengumi's young prodigy, approaching at speed, Kenshin unleashed a flurry of attacks, none with any style or substance. He sought only a smokescreen to cover his retreat. He was feeling boxed in, trapped, and with one wolf on his tail and the second only a few streets away, he wanted to get out.

Brushing the haze of Kenshin's swings away almost carelessly, even if betrayed by the somewhat strained expression on his face, Saito barked orders to his men, commanding them to spread out, filling the streets a little way off. He didn't want the Battousai to escape, but neither did he want them to interfere in their duel. The only one who would do that would be the one with an equal grudge against the little redhead, and who happened to be rounding the corner.

Saito fell back slightly, allowing Okita to stand beside him as they both faced down Kenshin, who stood alertly, sword raised, and trying not to let a profound feeling of anxiety that was not, not, _not_ fear show on his face.

"Well, good evening, Red," Okita said somewhat cheerfully. It was easy to be cheerful when you were backed up by more soldiers than most people could count on both hands and facing one enemy.

"Captain," Kenshin said softly, no more, no less than he'd afforded Saito. His eyes flickered all too obviously across the rooftops, the streets, and the soldiers. He couldn't see any route that wouldn't end with him getting killed.

All right, he was a _little_ more than anxious now.

And the captains saw it. A feral smirk creased Saito's face, slanted golden eyes glittering brightly. Okita raised one eyebrow, still smiling.

"Getting ideas, Battousai?" he asked. "No, I see not. Don't try it." He fell into a 'ready' stance. "You could surrender. You're outnumbered."

Kenshin fixed his eyes on Okita steadily, sparing one hand to tuck his loose hair behind his ears. "No chance." Soldier and assassin of legend he might be, but he was still a teenager, and he still reacted like one sometimes.

The young captain shrugged, keeping the movement from disrupting his sword stance. "Thought I'd offer. I didn't really think you'd take it, Himura-san. You do have courage, I will give you that."

"His courage just got his hide tacked to a wall," Saito muttered inaudibly as they leapt to the attack.

Kenshin wasn't there. Ducking to one side of Saito's stabbing blade, he leapt upward the instant his foot hit the pavement, but was forced to land again as Okita slashed down. The ring of blade against blade cut through the night air, and sparks from the friction as the captain of the First Unit pushed the swords together, holding the redhead in a body-to-body lock. Desperately, he twisted away, evading Saito's blade, but, with the lock broken, Okita was free to lash out, and this time, Kenshin couldn't block in time.

Blood—his own blood, and too much of it—filled Kenshin's eyes. Blinking furiously, and holding back a cry of agony for the cut that had slashed a shallow trench into his forehead before missing his throat by inches, he parried a second strike.

He couldn't see…

Relying on only his ears and instinct, he tried to pull back enough to try to wipe the blood from his eyes with one sleeve. A scream wanted to burst out, for the pain, for the fear, for the bone-deep knowledge that _I'm going to die I'm going to die_ but he couldn't, he had to get out of here, go _up, up, up they can't follow me there_…

Still mostly blinded, he tried to leap straight up too late. Ironically—although he didn't find it funny—he'd cleared enough of his vision to see the sword that punched straight through the center of his chest. The blade gleamed dully in the spare light.

He collapsed as Saito pulled the sword from his body with a sharp jerk. Gasping for breath automatically, beginning to choke on the blood he was breathing out, he struggled to his knees. In some distant corner of his mind, he tightened his grip on his katana. Raising his eyes stubbornly, he glared up at the two Shinsengumi captains. Okita saluted him formally. After a pause, just to show how little he cared, Saito did the same thing.

And it was probably that—the sight of his own life's blood on the sword of his enemy, raised to salute his passing—that pushed him over the edge. Gathering his quickly ebbing strength, he pulled himself halfway to his feet and spat blood on the cobblestones in front of them. Before Saito and Okita even had time to express disbelief over his even being able to stand with a sword having been stabbed all the way through him—he could feel hot blood spreading over his back—he went one better.

"The _hell!_" Okita yelled as the little redhead landed on the balcony he'd meant to reach (seconds? minutes? hours?) ago and took off into the city. "That's not possible!"

Saito didn't waste time in disbelief, spinning to order the staring patrolmen to disperse. "Get that man!" he snapped, not raising his voice any further than he had to. Saito hated to shout, but his lowered voice was a lot scarier and more effective than some men's temper tantrums.

"He can't get far," Okita said in the voice of someone trying to convince himself as much as others.

Saito grumbled wordlessly at the rooftops in general, presumably in honor of Battousai.

"Not even a dragon can survive a sword through its heart, Saito-san." Okita sounded a little more confident now. "Even if he escapes the men, his corpse will be found face down in a gutter somewhere…I think we've seen the last of Red."

Saito lowered his gaze to his bloody katana, and smiled satisfactorily: an expression that could freeze blood. "I've been looking forward to doing that for years," he said almost happily.

**INSERT LINE HERE**

He was running, running, running, and he didn't know where he was.

Kenshin couldn't remember how he'd left the city, or how he'd escaped the wolves following him. He rather thought he'd blacked out on the run, or simply gone berserk. With blood gushing from his chest, it didn't really matter. He'd lost too much blood, and darkness was creeping at the edges of his vision.

He fell, finally, outside the city beyond sight of anywhere human-made. The odor of damp, dark earth, tainted by his own sweat and the smell of blood soaking the earth, filled his nostrils, and he staggered to a clumsy all fours just to get his face out of the dirt. Red hair, wet with perspiration, fell over his face like a shroud. Gritting his teeth, Kenshin tried to regain his feet, if only to face death like a samurai.

It was fruitless; he was too weak. Still gripping his katana, he flung an unvoiced challenge into the face of his own death.

_I will not die like this! Do you hear me? I WILL NOT!_

He fell in the bloodstained mud churned up by his defiance. Darkness took him as he screamed in inaudible fury.

The world shifted as his soul fled through the weave of Time…

_To Be Continued._

**Author's Note:** Yes, I formally apologize to Kenshin-as-Battousai for having to kill him. Don't get mad at me. There is a point. If you must get mad at me, critique my battle choreography. I've never had to direct a swordfight before, and the last person I actually had to kill off was the _Enterprise-D_. Eh heh. Don't ask. Comments? Criticism? Continuation? The last will happen without you. I need your help on the first two.


	2. The Wheels Are Spinning

**Chapter Two: The Wheels Are Spinning**

**Author's Note:** First, I'm truly overwhelmed by the responses (and amount of response) I got. Just _flabbergasted_. Thank you…I was so sure that beginning stunk. On a side note, beware of late updates. My teachers have rediscovered homework; a plague on all their houses. May the termites get 'em. On **Romance:** Although I'm not focusing on the Kenshin/Kaoru relationship, it will be brushed over, and accepted as part of the landscape, as it is. But no substantial amount of screen time will be devoted to it…I think.

**Disclaimer:** _If I owned RuroKen…_I'd probably have to speak Japanese. I know 'snow' and 'demon' and 'little brother' and 'pretty'. Hardly vocabulary for a popular manga.

**ON WITH THE SHOW!**

_Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. —_Douglas Adams

She tossed over and rearranged her covers for about the millionth time that night. Well, it probably hadn't been that many times, but it felt that way. The humidity wave that was torturing her body seemed to be messing with her mind too.

Grumbling, Kaoru shoved even the one remaining thin sheet off her and sat up. Brushing her dark brown bangs away from eyes still not encrusted by sleep, impossible in the cloying heat, she repented and folded the cover back neatly at the end of the futon. She grumbled wordlessly under her breath as she reached for the bucket of water and dipper that she'd brought into her room when she'd retired for the night.

It was empty. She'd been drinking from it impulsively all night, and it had become such a habit in a few hours that Kaoru hadn't even known she was doing it. Although she ran the darkly polished wooden dipper around the edges in the hope of collecting a little condensation, it was barely enough to wet the dipper, much less her lips and throat. Kaoru hopefully upended it over her head, to no avail.

Well, if she couldn't sleep anyway, it would take all of five minutes at the most to walk out to the well in the back area of her dojo and fill the bucket up again. In fact, if there was a spare left there, she rather thought it would be a good idea to take double the last amount. With the recent heat, she, her young student Yahiko, and Kenshin had gone through the corners of the Kamiya Dojo in search of anything that could hold water and was relatively portable, and left every bucket-like item by the well. The freewheeling ex-punk Sanosuke, of course, had not been there for the duration of the search, and had only showed up once lunch had been set out. Trust Sano to skip the work and freeload a meal.

Sliding open the shoji, she left her sandals by the door, walking barefoot through the dark halls of the house. Tiptoeing so as not to disturb Yahiko, who slept a few doors down, or Kenshin, who had excellent hearing and would no doubt be concerned about why she was up, she carried the empty bucket out of the room and through the outer doors without provoking any noise from the other inhabited rooms. Slipping the outer door closed behind her with barely a sound, she hopped from the porch and padded across the beaten ground of the dojo area, which was enclosed by walls on all sides.

Crossing the short few paces to the well, she lifted the rock that weighted the wooden cover off and placed it on the ground just behind her, within easy moving distance. Although not tremendously weighty, the stone had to be heavy enough to discourage any roving animals, such as a raccoon, from sneaking a free drink. With a wry smirk, she had to acknowledge that it didn't do anything to discourage roaming assistant dojo masters, but the contrast, and the near-immediate recollection of Megumi's favorite nickname for her, _tanuki_- or raccoon-girl, made the smirk drop into a scowl in a heartbeat.

Kneeling and filling her bucket before her sleep-deprived mind decided to drag up any other inanities, she glanced down into the water for a deliberative moment before leaning over the well and dumping the entire thing over her head.

Kaoru sighed in momentary blessed coolness for a moment before her sopping hair started sticking to her forehead, and the wisps that had sneaked free of her braid began to adhere to her neck. Scrubbing them away, she refilled the bucket before putting it down to wring the water out of her hair, which only soaked her white sleeping _yukata_ even further. Looking down at herself, Kaoru winced. If she went back to bed like this, not only would she leave a long wet trail down the corridor floor, which would need drying and polishing, her futon would become even more nastily muggy than the air. With all her dry clothes inside, she had no choice but to wait for her _yukata_ to dry after she had refilled her bucket.

Replacing the cover over the well, Kaoru sat down and stretched her hands over her head. Rising to complete the stretch, she shot an irritable glance at the sky. A few high wisps of cloud flitted quickly across the stars and in front of an almost half moon before passing out of her direct line of sight. Craning her neck backwards to follow them, she almost kicked the water-filled bucket with her bare foot when she stumbled over the same stone she'd moved not really all that long ago and definitely not long enough to have forgotten it, in theory.

She managed to avoid tripping over the bucket as well, but her balance was in grave danger for a few seconds as her free and dripping arms pin-wheeled wildly, scattering water droplets in all directions. As she swayed, she caught a glimpse of light coming from a more earthly source. Once she regained her equilibrium, Kaoru looked around the yard more closely.

Little flickers of candlelight leaked from the door to the main dojo hall, which appeared to be slightly ajar. Abandoning the water bucket, Kaoru dripped across the path to the dojo. Upon closer inspection, the light was definitely firelight. Cautiously, in case she was about to be attacked by a warrior holding a grudge against her or hers, and cursing herself for not having a wooden sword to hand, she pressed herself flat against the wall and looked cautiously through the gap between door and doorjamb with one eye.

At first she didn't understand what he was doing. Lit candles stood on stands, scattered at random throughout the large hall. They cast conflicting shadows on the walls, floor, and ceiling, changing with each wavering of each flame as well as with every movement of the swordsman practicing his art among them.

Squinting, Kaoru tried to judge whether he'd end up being annoyed that she'd ended up watching his training, although Kenshin rarely if ever got annoyed with anyone, least of all her. But as he spun, reverse-bladed sword flashing out and flying downwards barely an inch from a candle before avoiding a second by a hairbreadth, his drawn-back hair flew and she noticed what else was strange about this practice session.

Kenshin had his eyes closed, relying on only the impressions the light left on his eyelids and his memory of where the candles were to avoid knocking them over. He was doing a good job, too. As Kaoru watched, less afraid of being caught watching than before, he moved through a completely disconnected series of stylized—though highly battle-worthy—moves. They had no theme to them at all. It was if he was fighting a living opponent.

For a brief second after this observation occurred to her, the rather ludicrous thought of an invisible swordsman crossed her mind before being dismissed. Although she'd encountered some swordsmen who could move at speeds beyond the human eye, namely Kenshin himself; his intimidating, egotistical Master, Hiko; and the young man Seta Soujiro, who she'd never actually met, but had heard plenty about from Sano since their return from the madman Shisho's lair and Kyoto, none of the above had actually been able to turn themselves invisible. And Kenshin didn't look like he was fighting a living opponent. True, he was concentrating, but not the intensely focused look she'd seen in combat.

She had never seen him practice. He'd begged off training with her on the grounds of not being very good with a _shinai_ or bamboo sword more than once, and had only recently started helping Yahiko practice the boy's Kamiya-Kasshin Ryu style, which he was learning from his young teacher. But despite being a forced listener to Kaoru's many lectures on the importance of staying in shape, he never trained within her sight. She'd never really thought about it, because he fought as if his skill were inbred and almost completely thoughtless. Now, watching raptly, she gave in and stared, partly for the reason that she just liked watching him.

Within a few seconds, he increased his speed; the accuracy of his maneuvers staying so lifelike, Kaoru could almost see his imaginary opponent go down beneath the blade. Freezing with the sword at the end of a sideways cut, reversed blade hairsbreadths from a candlestick, he held his sword partway to the ground as if keeping the tip to the envisioned man's throat then opened his eyes and scrubbed sweat out of them with the floppy sleeve of his blue _gi_.

It was inevitable that he would see her, standing now in the doorway that she'd opened just a little further in order to see better. As he lowered his arm, he spotted Kaoru out of the corner of his eye, and turned to face her, a surprised expression crossing his face.

She knew what was coming. "Oro," he said softly, an expression she had yet to find a singular definition for beyond general surprise. The sound of the familiar two syllables brought a small smile to her face. "Good evening, Kaoru-_dono._"

He wasn't going to ask 'Why are you up?' directly, but she felt she had to answer. "It's too hot to sleep," she explained. "You too?"

Kenshin blinked at her, slightly goofy _rurouni_ face at maximum. "You found a better solution than this one."

"Huh? Oh!" She opened the door fully and stepped out of the puddle that had steadily collected at her bare feet. Kenshin grinned outright at the chagrined expression on her face, sheathed his _sakabato,_ and vanished into the corridor just outside the room. He reappeared not ten seconds later, tossing her a white towel of the sort Sano called 'sweat-rags'.

She wrapped it around her hair, squeezed the remaining water from the braid and dropped the towel directly on top of the puddle before realizing he'd changed the subject on her. "I've never seen you practice before," she said musingly as he reemerged from the closet with a second cloth for himself.

"It has been a restless night, so this one came to practice," Kenshin explained apologetically, seating himself on the slightly raised section of floor. About to say more, he stopped and looked into the middle distance as if unable to phrase his thoughts correctly.

Kaoru joined him, sitting within arm's reach but outside accepted personal space. "Are you all right, Kenshin?" she asked. "You looked kinda strange for a second there."

His brow furrowed even further. "This one does not know…" he said softly. "Recently there have been dreams, but too dizzy to have any form…" He trailed off again, looking lost.

She reached over to put a hand on his forehead. "Well, you don't feel sick, although you'd have to brave the vixen to be sure of that. It's just the heat, Kenshin," she said reassuringly. Squinting at him as he pondered, she added, "Or we could brave Misao and Okina, if that's less dangerous."

"Oro," Kenshin said again, this time meaning something along the lines of 'oh, help'.

Not three weeks away from Kyoto, the dojo had received a letter from the young and perhaps overenthusiastic Okashira Misao, co-signed by Okina, her adoptive (and just as energetic) grandfather and the rest of the Oniwabanshu at the Kyoto inn Aoi-ya, managing to both beg and demand at the same time that their friends in Tokyo return to Kyoto for the rather vague goal of 'having fun'. Three weeks, Sano had expressed when he had heard about the letter, was not a sufficient recovery time from Misao's enthusiasm for life, Shinomori Aoshi, and being Okashira, in roughly that order.

However, she had added, almost as a bribe, that the weather was normal _there_ (being Kyoto), why didn't they come experience some _normal_ weather, and putting up with her was a small price to pay, right? This last was not verbalized, and it was only Sano, the most sarcastic of their little group, who came up with it. He'd been protested down as his friends defended Misao loyally.

It was getting to the point where the weird heat did make the trip worth it. It wasn't as if they had anywhere to be, and she had enjoyed the little Okashira's company. And as Kaoru watched Kenshin worry, she decided that she'd talk Yahiko around.

Speak of the devil.

"Oi, _busu_, what'cha doing with all the candles?"

"Don't call me that, Yahiko!" Kaoru yelled, jumping to her feet in surprise and anger at the insult with a blush spreading over her face and eyes growing flinty. "I thought you were asleep!"

"This one thought you were both asleep," Kenshin added to the air from somewhere around her waist. "Instead it is like the middle of the afternoon in here."

"Too dark," Yahiko grinned, kicking the door closed behind him. His flyaway hair stuck out at odd angles, testament to getting at least a little sleep. His reddish-brown eyes were fully awake nonetheless. "Why is everyone up?"

"Back to bed now, mister," Kaoru ordered. "You need sleep."

"I stole your bucket, by the way," Yahiko informed her without missing a beat.

Despite the heat and sleep deprivation, Kaoru still found the energy to snatch a _bokken_ from the walls and chase Yahiko around the room twice in quick succession, both ducking and swerving around the candles. Several flickered out due to the wind of their passing.

Kenshin chuckled faintly as Yahiko dodged a candlestick, headed for the door in hopes of escape, and tried to change direction too fast. He slipped over the puddle that was still in the doorway. The ten-year-old was promptly attacked by his enraged teacher. Still watching the chaos with amusement as he rose to extinguish the remaining candles and store them away, a soft noise barely made it to his ears over the cacophony by the door.

Looking over his shoulder warily, he half-drew his sakabato and padded softly over to one wall. He knew he looked rather silly, but he placed his right ear to the wall and listened closely.

Did he hear the sound of breathing? Who or what would be standing breathing outside the dojo at this hour?

A shudder ran through him as a fragment of a memory of a dream forgotten flitted past his mind's eye.

_A million mirrors, an army of me _this one _can't get away can't hide from yourself myself_ this one's self _eyes my own _this one's own _staring I see you we see you we are you and nothing matters because everything matters and everything is everything is everything has been _no _collision never get away can't see can't hear can't be _dizzy_ turning spinning the mirrors are spinning the wheels are spinning. I see _this one sees _me see you see us see I _only one this one _I me we us I have to_ get away

Kenshin lunged away from the wall as if it had bitten him, pushing it away from him with both hands and succeeding only in stumbling over his own feet. Rescuing himself much as Kaoru had done not long ago, he strode quickly past the scuffling pair, who had fought their way away from the door, and slid open the shoji to leap onto the hard ground. He drew his sword in one smooth gesture, and, balancing on the balls of his feet as if preparing to leap into battle or into the air at a moment's notice, swept round the corner of the long dojo.

He faced only the night air and the slightest breeze.

_The wind is _the wind is _rising _coming the world is _the sky is _spinning _falling dying _run

With a confused look on his face, Kenshin turned in a slow circle, seeing only the night-lit yard and uncovered well. Frowning slightly, disturbed although his conscious mind told him that Kaoru had simply not yet replaced the cover, he shifted his grip on his sword hilt and crept over to the well.

Picking up the cover with his left hand, as his right didn't want to let go of his _sakabato_, he fitted it onto the well with a short clunk. Kenshin turned away to pick up the weight, but stopped as he was half-bent over. The fine hairs on the back of his neck prickled, telling him despite his other senses that someone or something was near that needed his attention _now_.

The redhead straightened up, leaving the rock at his feet as he scoured everything within the walls another time. Still, no one was visible, and, were it not for the sounds of an argument well in progress inside the dojo hall, there would be no audible evidence of life beyond Kenshin's own breaths, which rang in his ears cacophonously.

Looking down, Kenshin flinched slightly. The well cover, which he had left properly placed on the inner ridge that kept it from dropping into the water a short way down, was loose. One edge of it hung off the well about halfway, leaving a space large enough for a small man or woman to crawl or perhaps drop through.

Kenshin was now thoroughly spooked, so he drew his reverse-bladed sword all the way and held it down in front of him, ready for battle. In two quick steps, he crossed the distance to the gap and pointed the tip downwards.

There was no reaction.

Puzzled, Kenshin leaned over slightly, keeping his center of balance level in case he was being bluffed out. A quick, cursory glance told him that he was jumping at shadows. The almost-half moon, still high in the sky, cast a cold light over the water below, and anyone hiding inside would have stood out like spilled ink on white paper.

He shook his head at his own paranoia and sheathed his sword easily. Leaning over to resettle the wooden lid, he was suddenly caught, like a child, by the sight of his own reflection in the still waters.

Kenshin stared down into the water and grinned at his mirror image for the heck of it. His reflection grinned back, golden eyes sparkling in the moonlight—what?

Caught by the image, Kenshin stared, unable to move. The likeness in the well stared back wide-eyed, confirming beyond all doubt that the eyes that regarded him from beneath were indeed a bright, molten gold. As if to cry out, Kenshin opened his mouth slightly, dry lips cracking. The mirror image copied him exactly. To his horror, the redhead felt warm liquid sliding down his cheek from the old cross-shaped scar. Staring helplessly, he saw in the water that the fluid was dark. A single drop fell into the well as it completed its journey down his chin, disrupting the image.

With an abrupt, stifled cry, the redhead lurched backwards as he had from the dojo wall, and again the vertigo struck him. He tripped over his own feet while trying to rise from the kneeling position he had affected to look downward and sat down hard. Scrubbing at his eyes desperately, Kenshin placed his head between his knees in a universal cure for lightheadedness, trembling. As he struggled to clear the haze of fear from his eyes, his left hand brushed against the corresponding cheek, and he snatched it free to look at it desperately.

There was nothing but sweat on his hand, and Kenshin breathed a sigh of relief that did more to relieve the wooziness than anything he'd done before. Tasting the sweat to confirm that yes, it was his own salty sweat, he pulled himself to his feet, leaning heavily on his sheathed sword for a moment before looking up and shoving it back through his sash.

The well cover was back on, but the rock was still firmly on the ground, squatting where it had been left before in a very rock-like manner. Kenshin ignored the last residual tremors in order to pick up the stone and drop it resoundingly in the center of the lid. It made a hollow booming noise.

Kenshin could hear the noise of Kaoru and Yahiko's scuffle beginning to die down, so he turned his back on the yard and headed back to the dojo, trying very hard to forget what he thought he had seen. His sole concession to the strange event, as he stepped back up onto the porch, was to mutter absently, "This one does _not_ get enough sleep."

He slid the shoji back open with a creak, disturbing the boy and his _sensei_ from the now only verbal quarrel, which they broke off in mid-word as he entered.

"Kenshin?" asked Yahiko, sounding more puzzled than he really should be. "How did you get over there?"

What? "This one walked," Kenshin said matter-of-factly.

"But…but," the boy stuttered. "You were over there just a few seconds ago." He indicated the spot, beneath the small collection of tags that indicated current students and teachers, that Kenshin had indeed inhabited before he'd started hallucinating. "I could 'a sworn…" Yahiko continued, sounding truly baffled. "Huh." He added nothing else.

"Perhaps we are all up too late," Kenshin suggested, seeing Kaoru scrub tiredly at her eyes when Yahiko wasn't looking. "Come on, Yahiko." Quickly, he assembled the remaining candlesticks in one corner. "This one will put them back tomorrow morning," he assured Kaoru as he shooed her too toward the door. She went with no fuss, stopping only to put her _bokken_ back on the wall and bow to the small shrine set into one wall.

Various versions of 'good night' could be heard as the three regular residents of the Kamiya dojo returned to their vacated beds. Still somewhat disturbed, Kenshin double-checked the outer locks on the gate, and then, after a brief moment's thought, checked the house locks as well. All were shut tight.

_Mental note to self,_ Kaoru thought as she dozed off in her room despite the cloying heat. _Get more sleep. Find Sano; talk gang into trip to Kyoto, get seasickness remedies from Megumi, send letter to Misao, and book a ship. _

**Author's Note:** It's not supposed to make sense yet. Star Trek plus Stephen King (which I have been newly introduced to) plus RuroKen minus space-time integrity equals…invalid data…Delete? Y/N? (sigh) graphing calculators love to tell you when you've made a mistake. Oh yes, and let me apologize to my teachers (and Shakespeare). I didn't mean the above misquote. I like my teachers. Most of the time.


	3. Horseshoe Nails

**Chapter Three: Horseshoe Nails**

**Author's Note/Warnings: **Warning: Contains names chosen by flipping through a big yellow book. (All praise the big yellow book!) Second Warning: Written by someone who has never been on a sea voyage nor even on a large boat… Third Warning: I have finished my Honors English project and a second English project (does a happy dance, also because that's a pretty good Late Chapter Pass)! Enough said.

**Disclaimer:** _If I owned RuroKen…_I would be earning enough to buy all the DVDs for the Original Series (Star Trek) too. glances around stormily No TOS DVDs. Ergo…you do the math—I hate math.

**ON WITH THE SHOW!**

_Events in the past may be roughly divided into those that probably never happened and those that do not matter. _—William Ralph Inge

Yahiko chucked the traveling bag he was carrying into the room that they'd been assigned. It flopped onto the ground with an unsatisfying noise and an irritating lack of further movement, not even skidding across the dark wooden floor. Casting a resentful look at the placid harbor outside the circular porthole, he flipped the bag over with his foot, rolling it into a corner.

"Yahiko, pick that up," Kaoru said automatically as she followed him in.

"Why?"

She dropped her own bags at her feet and folded her arms across her chest. "Don't start this," she said ominously. "Just remember, _I_ have Megumi-san's anti-nausea remedies in _my_ stuff. And you are absolutely not allowed to go digging through my clothes."

"That's blackmail!" Yahiko yelped, jaw dropping in protest. They'd discovered several months ago on their last trip to Kyoto that Yahiko got very, very seasick. And although these quarters were nicer than the ones the two of them had inhabited last time, the sight of the water out the window, which Yahiko obviously devoutly believed would turn horrible as soon as they got out of sight of land, had served to remind the Tokyo samurai of how miserable he'd been before.

"Actually, I think it's extortion," Kaoru corrected, moving from her stubborn stance in the doorway and inching past him. Over Yahiko's enraged cry of 'Does it matter!", she opened the door in one wall and entered her own small cabin, for all three of her male companions had objected strenuously to the idea of her staying in the same room as them for the duration of the voyage.

It was a small room, with, Kaoru was glad to see, a window, which provided no sweeping panoramas but sufficient amounts of air and light. The salt breeze from outside stung her nostrils for a brief second as the air flowed through the newly opened door. Yahiko glared daggers at the invisible current as it passed him by. A small double bunk was built into the wall directly across from the door. Evidently, it had been built with two inhabitants in mind, but unless things changed, Kaoru believed she would have the room to herself. Kaoru slung her bags, one slightly larger than the other, but both easy to carry, onto a rack bolted firmly to the inner wall for this exact purpose. She stood on tiptoes and fished two straps from the back of the shelf, pulling them across the bags so that they would not fly loose if the ship sailed into a storm or rough waters.

Out in the large main cabin, Yahiko tried to imitate her, but ended up being an inch too short to reach. Chuckling under her breath, Kaoru plucked the bag from his reaching hands and slung it into the appropriate position, alongside the other two bags, presumably belonging to Kenshin and Sanosuke, who had preceded them onto the ship, _Praxidikae,_ about an hour before. She did notice that a familiar sheathed sword had been stored quietly on the rack, beneath the bags but in a position where it would be easy to draw in an emergency. It would seem that Kenshin, not wanting to argue Captain Orestes and his crew around on the subject of the technically illegal reverse-bladed sword, had left it out of the way. Somehow that made Kaoru feel better. Knowing that Kenshin felt secure enough to go unarmed made her feel safe too.

Thinking better of it after a few seconds, she took pity on the younger boy and pulled on the strap so that it dangled over the edge, well within Yahiko's reach.

Unsurprisingly, Yahiko tugged experimentally on the strap and it fell squarely on his head. Rolling her eyes, Kaoru left the boy to try to toss it back to the rack, which he did with only two tries and a shout of 'Ha! Take that!"

Turning back to her little room, Kaoru shut the door firmly and set off, Yahiko in tow, to find her errant companions. It didn't take her long to zero in on the sounds of talking that were audible even through the walls. Within a few minutes of prowling down hallways (most of this time was spent going in the wrong direction), she and Yahiko entered a fairly large room partly filled with a handful of people. On the far side of the room, Sano was easily visible due to his height, not to mention his loud voice, which was currently raised in what sounded like a funny story. She just hoped it didn't relate to them. Judging by the way Kenshin, standing next to him and listening, was smiling, it wasn't.

"Excuse me, miss," a young man, dressed in an outfit sharp enough to be called a uniform, said quietly, emerging from a second knot of people. His nose had a crook in it, no doubt from an old break that had healed wrong. He pulled a roll of paper from a satchel slung over his shoulder. "Are you Kamiya Kaoru?"

"Yes, and this is Yahiko…er, that was Yahiko," she amended, realizing that her student had already departed to join Sano and Kenshin.

"Good." He shoved the paper back into his bag. "You're the last to check in." Turning to the rest of the room, he said in a voice that carried, "We'll be underway shortly, so if anyone wants to jump ship, do it now!"

Kaoru looked sideways at him, trying not to look too taken aback. He saw her surprise anyway and grinned lopsidedly before departing through the same door she'd just entered through. Taking it in stride, Kaoru followed Yahiko across the deck in accompaniment to a burst of laughter from her friends' group and several of the other people who had been listening in.

"Um, who was that?" she asked in the relative direction of Sanosuke.

"Who was which?"

"The sailor with the weird sense of humor and a broken nose," she retorted. "Shaggy light brown hair, bluish-grey eyes." An odd color in Meiji Japan, the eyes had caught her attention immediately.

"Oh, him," Sano said casually. "You mean Lukas, he's an old friend of mine, former street kid like the little punk here." He ruffled Yahiko's hair until it stuck out into even more impossible directions and the younger boy threatened to bite him. "The nose is my doing," he added, withdrawing his hand before Yahiko could make good on his threat.

"I should have known," Kaoru muttered.

"Kaoru-dono, this is Sessui-san," Kenshin continued the introductions. The stocky man was old enough to be her grandfather, but his jet black eyes sparkled with life. He bowed politely to her, long grey hair, drawn back into a high samurai ponytail, flopping over one shoulder. Sessui brushed it back automatically as he straightened, twitching the tip. No sooner had he resumed his normal stance than the girl in the florid green kimono reattached herself to his arm.

"Sanosuke-kun tells a funny story, doesn't he?" the girl burbled. "At least there will be someone on the journey who can come up with something interesting to talk about!"

Sessui chuckled tolerantly. "My grandson's fiancée, Kelila," he said with a faint smile. "She doesn't enjoy my war stories."

"They're just so repetitive," Kelila informed them all, raising one hand to fuss with the white lily that stood out starkly against her black bun. "And I was just a kid back then."

"Of course, of course," Sessui said fondly. Clearly his war stories weren't the only things repeated.

"Ruthyas, Meirai, come and meet Kaoru and Yahiko," Sano called. Unnoticed by all but Yahiko, who turned slightly pale but stood his ground for the moment, the deck shifted slightly beneath their feet as the _Praxidikae_ got underway.

"A pleasure," the drab woman, all in grey, said distractedly, not bothering to rise from her cushion on the deck where she knelt with a faintly steaming cup of tea in her hands. Even the cup was a sullen color, with striations of black swarming up and across its surface.

Her husband was more outgoing. "Please forgive my wife, Kaoru-san," Ruthyas said softly, returning her courteous bow. "She is not well. We return to Kyoto, where she lived with much of her family, for her health."

"Please accept my good wishes for her recovery," Kaoru said politely.

He smiled. "Arigatou, Kaoru-san," the pale man replied. In truth, he looked as sickly as his wife: with his blanched skin, dull eyes, and shallow, hoarse breathing, Ruthyas appeared likely to collapse at any moment.

"And Tydeus-san is not here, _hai_?" Sessui asked, peering around the others as if this Tydeus would be hiding under the floorboards somewhere.

Ruthyas scowled, choler making his sickly cheeks darken to the point of looking almost healthy. For a moment it looked as if he would spit on the deck. "That jumped-up merchant's son? He thinks himself too great to associate with anyone else who dares to breathe the same air."

"Now, now," Sessui said in hopes of placating him, pulling his arm away from Kelila to pat Ruthyas soothingly on the shoulder. "Tydeus-san has many things to do to get his wares safely to Kyoto."

"Many things to do?" Ruthyas complained. "Captain Orestes' men are the ones sailing the ship! What has Tydeus to do until we make port?"

"No doubt he has other work to catch up on," Kenshin spoke up, having been watching each speaker carefully. "This one has rarely been subject to paperwork, but he has heard merchants complain of it many a time. All of them would have been glad of three days sail, and taken the chance to put their affairs in order."

"The lad's right, Ruthyas-san," Sessui said. Out of his view, Kaoru saw Kenshin sigh at being taken for a teenager _again_, and smiled

Ruthyas said no more, but motioned to his wife, who rose slowly, collecting pillow and tea, and followed him from the room, presumably back to their cabin.

"Whoa," Yahiko commented. "What's with the guy with the bee up his nose?"

"Yahiko!"

Sessui laughed, clinging to Kelila for support as his entire frame shook. "No, no, miss, don't scold the boy! That's as close to Ruthyas as I've heard in years."

Resuming his normal mien, Sessui brushed the incident aside. "The poor man is burdened with an ill wife and her family. I've met him briefly once before, and it seems he doesn't change much."

"Oh," Yahiko said. If he'd been hoping for some marvelous story, he didn't show his disappointment. "So why's he so mad at this Tydeus guy?"

"I don't know all the details, Yahiko-kun, and they're not honestly my affair," the man said calmly. "I believe that Ruthyas is not a highly successful man, and Tydeus-san is the son of a wealthy merchant clan. The Ruthyas family prospered before the war, and when Meiji began, it brought them their downfall."

"How do you know all this?" Kenshin asked politely. His brow furrowed slightly in concern and curiosity.

Sessui smiled. "I'm a nosy old coot," he said cheerfully, producing snorts of laughter from Sanosuke and Yahiko. "I may not know them personally, but I listen to a lot of stories as I travel. However, I don't think you need concern yourself with Tydeus; I have not seen him for the entire time I have been on board, and I arrived yesterday. I do know that it is his family's cargo that the _Praxidikae_ carries to Kyoto."

Kelila pursed her heavily painted lips as if starting to say something and then, scowling, stopped.

"Well, I think I'll go up on deck for some fresh air then," Kaoru said to break the brief silence that followed this statement. "Anyone to join me?"

Kenshin and Sanosuke volunteered to accompany her. Yahiko, who felt the ship lurch at that exact moment, made an unarticulated noise of sudden distress at the thought of the smell of sea air and the sight of moving water, and fled the room.

Trying not to chuckle sympathetically at her student's plight, Kaoru followed Sanosuke up to the open air, Kenshin padding quietly behind.

**

* * *

**

Well into the late hours of that same night, Sessui sat alone in his cabin with the lights out and a sheet pinned over the window by a knife. It fluttered in the night breeze, casting bright moon shadows on the opposite walls, which then reflected fluidly across the room into infinity. He stared at the shifting patterns and the darkness between them, troubled. He was almost sure he'd recognized one of his fellow passengers earlier, but as his aging memory failed him again, he made a soft noise of fury and tugged on the end of his ponytail in a nervous habit.

The gesture, unconscious since his days in the Revolution when he'd begun wearing his hair in the samurai style, brought back the faded recollection he'd been searching for. The association was distant, and only he would have put the two together, but the connection finally clicked.

For a moment he thought he had truly gone mad as a soft tap on the door coincided with his mental revelation, the sounds closely resembling each other.

He almost asked, "Who's there?" but he was sure he could guess. "Come in," he called aloud, shifting to sit cross-legged on his favorite, well-worn floor cushion.

The door to the hall insisted on creaking noisily as it was opened. The visitor winced at the discordant noise, stepping into the room in bare feet.

"I thought it might be you, somehow," Sessui said, trying to sound as if this were a certain truth and not just a vague hunch. "There's another cushion by the bunk, if you wish to sit down." He nodded at the corner.

"Thank you." His visitor spoke softly, as if not to wake the (presumably) sleeping in the cabins on either side of the room.

Sessui waited while his unexpected guest arranged the pillow and knelt politely. "I admit, it was a surprise to see you here," he started, plunging right to the heart of the matter.

"Yes. Our meeting is unexpected."

The old man squinted at his visitor's face, wishing momentarily for a candle—or better yet, broad daylight—to better read the veiled expression. "You've changed," he said finally. "To journey to Kyoto in this fashion, in this company—this is not like you."

"Do you think so?" The face on the other side of the room fell suddenly sad. "Don't be so sure."

Sessui frowned concernedly. "Are you all right?" he was forced to ask. His visitor had suddenly shuddered, wrapping arms in long sleeves around the shivering body. "You're ill. Is that why?"

He didn't quite believe it when the intruder denied it with a single headshake. "No. Not ill, the way you mean."

The old man sighed determinedly. His frown deepened. "Let me pour you a cup of tea." When the other showed signs of refusing, he insisted. "Just to warm you up. Sick or no, you look frozen." Privately, Sessui wondered how on earth anyone could be cold when the burning weather was the talk of the region.

As his guest agreed reluctantly to the tea, Sessui started to pull himself to his feet. Lost in thought for—how long had it been again—he had gone stiff, and his ankles threatened to collapse beneath him.

"No, don't trouble yourself," the visitor said suddenly, rising far more fluidly and catching his arm. With not much incentive to refuse the offer of help, Sessui let himself be pushed gently back to the deck and watched as the tea was prepared for him.

"Thank you," he said, accepting the newly filled teacup with pleasure as it was handed to him. "Strange, now I need it too. You're right, it is cold."

"The times have been strange," the other said, causing Sessui to look up sharply at the odd tone of voice. A drop of hot tea spilled over his hand, but he didn't notice until he looked down and saw the moisture dripping down the back of his hand.

"Gods, but I'm clumsy tonight," he said with a faint laugh that died in his throat almost as soon as it escaped. He shook his hand to scatter the tea across the cabin. The other flinched away from the flying rapidly cooled drops. "Sorry."

"It's all right. Are _you_ all right, though? You don't look well either." Sessui felt the cool touch of the back of another's hand on his forehead, checking for fever. "You're overheated. Why on earth do you have the window blocked?" Abruptly, the visitor's mood changed. "That was rude. Sorry. You may do, of course, as you wish."

Sessui put his own hand to his forehead. How had he not noticed how sick he felt? "Well, right now, my wish is to lie down for the rest of the night. I'm ready for bed. Will you help me up?" Unashamed—he was an old man and deserved some respect, after all—he raised one hand for assistance.

His visitor lifted him to his feet without much effort. Nevertheless, even with the help, he stumbled, leaning heavily on his assistant. "Thank you, young one." It was nice to be able to call everyone that, he mused. "I'm just so woozy." In fact, his vision was blurring as he spoke. As he watched dizzily, the hand and arm supporting him faded and solidified before his eyes.

"Wonder if mah hands'll do tha'," he mumbled in a slurred voice, holding them up for inspection. At the sight of them, he gasped in horror, shock cutting through the daze.

"What in the hells!" he cried, but his voice was only a whisper. He gaped at the shriveled wrecks that were all that were left of his hands. Tearing his vision away from them, he followed the effect up his arms. The skin and flesh of his arms began the same process.

"What have you done?" Sessui gasped, sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that his midnight visitor was responsible. "How could you do this to me!"

The arms that so recently pulled him to his feet now stopped him from hitting the deck with an audible thud, supporting him as the infection shriveled its way towards his heart. He no longer had the strength or the breath to cry out for help, even if he had any hope of getting any in the middle of the night.

_Why didn't I leave the door closed when I figured out who was bothering me?_ he raged at himself. _Why didn't I watch the tea more closely? How could I have been so **stupid?**_

_How could I have known…?_

Fear made his vision clear too late to do any good. As the patterns from the moon and waves reflected off eyes steadily glazing over as his heart and lungs shriveled away from within, his murderer, standing over him in a mockery of final respect, no longer looked even remotely insubstantial.

**Author's Note:** And there's my 'B' plot for you. What, you thought they were just going to sit on a boat for three days? No way! They never catch a break like that! By the way, if anyone can tell me, off the bat and without looking ANYWHERE else (and that includes Google; stay on this page), what 'Praxidikae' means, I will declare him or her a Master of Random Trivia. It is not a Star Trek joke unless…you read all the same books I do, run into the same trivia bits I do, make similar great leaps of logic, and have a weird sense of humor…or read my plans. No cheating!


	4. Horn and Ivory

**Chapter Four: Horn and Ivory**

**Author's Note: **An Equation for your reading pleasure: FinalsPLUS Writer's Block/LazinessPLUS SolitairePLUS Computer problems EQUALS Long wait for chapter 4 of _Stretch in the Strings_. Sorry. Oh, yes, and one other thing: I had a morning job as camp counselor to 9 3-year-olds, which is probably behind the Kaoru/Kenshin scene later on. (I'm sure you'll be able to see why.) Anyway, I'm actually relieved that no one has guessed whodunit. I guess I made it vague enough…or maybe it's so obvious, you haven't bothered to guess. (…) I need to stop thinking while I'm ahead.

**Disclaimer: **_If I owned RuroKen…_I wouldn't have been physically hit with the first volume and been issued an ultimatum to 'read!' back in seventh grade.

**ON WITH THE SHOW!**

_The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be. _—Paul Valery

Sano groaned, the banging on the door and the light streaming in through the window offending both his early-morning temper and his head. Rolling over violently in an effort to bury his head in the pillow to a point where he could neither see or hear either offense, he had the misfortune to toss with the ship and fall off his futon onto polished, but still hard, wooden floors.

He muttered a curse on light, doors, floors, and ships all in one sentence and sat up. "Whaddya want?" he shouted loud enough to be heard. Even he had to admit his voice sounded awful. "Too early," he added, lowering his voice to proper grumbling mode.

The door creaked open at speed. "Sano! Get up!"

"What the hell? Why?" Sano cracked one eyelid open and glared impotently up at an agitated Lukas, who shut the door hastily and leaned down to shake him awake. "'M up, 'm up!"

Various sleepy noises heralded the awakening of Yahiko, who lifted his head up from where he'd sprawled on his stomach across his futon, somehow managing to take up more of the same size futon than the much taller Sanosuke. "Whuss going on?" he managed to get out relatively coherently before slumping back down again. An instant later, he bolted up again, face going pale. He clapped a hand over his mouth and lunged for the bucket in the corner.

As a change from sleepy noises, retching sounds accompanied Lukas' distressed behavior. "Sano, did you see anything weird last night?"

"Weird? How so?" Sano scrubbed at his eyes and managed to open both without intense cranial agony. "Wait, what's happened? What's with you?"

Lukas was pale, eyes wide and sweat beading at his hairline and temples. "There's been an accident." He paused for a second before dropping the second option. "Or a murder."

"A _what_?" Sanosuke said, leaping to his feet, headache suddenly gone. "Who? And how? When? And _who_ did it?" In inevitable response to his shouting, Kaoru's door opened with her peering round it, sleep-disheveled hair standing out around her face in a faint halo where it hadn't stayed braided. Yahiko finished being queasy and stared wide-eyed at the two older men. Kenshin didn't move from where he'd been sleeping in a corner, but he also didn't take his eyes off Sano and Lukas. When he'd woken up, who knew?

"We don't know!" Lukas cried.

"You come in here shouting 'murder' and you don't even know who's dead?"

Lukas was in no mood for it. "Don't be stupid, Sano, we know who's dead, we just don't know why. And we don't know it's a murder, it's just suspicious!"

"Nothing is 'just' suspicious," Kenshin contributed, fingers tightening on his sakabato's hilt. "Why don't you tell this from the beginning, and then we'll see what we can do."

"Yeah. Yeah." Lukas ran a hand through his hair and slumped to the ground. Folding his legs as he hit the floor, he repeated the gesture. "All right. First, you're not supposed to talk about this with anyone else; in fact, you're probably going to be ordered to stay in your cabin until we get some answers." Receiving nods of comprehension from all corners, he continued, "Tarukare Sessui is dead—the first mate found him in his cabin early this morning. He claims he heard someone ransacking the room, or at least that's what he made of it…crashes, thuds, metal clanging. Then a cry, but no voice he knew. He couldn't even say if it was male or female, but said it sounded like a knife-fight was in progress. If it had been a fight, it would have been stupid of him, but he threw the door open with the intent to interfere.

"Well, I needn't tell you that there was no fight, no raid, no anything. The only weapon was a knife pinning a sheet over the window like a curtain. And the cabin was very tidy. Except—"

"For a dead body." Yahiko completed his sentence in a low voice, eyes now wide with amazement and morbid fascination. Then he realized how callous he sounded and wilted visibly under the glares from his teacher and, to a lesser degree, Kenshin.

"And a tea set," Lukas added, and everyone looked back at him. "Cup and tray, in front of a floor cushion."

"So he had a guest," Kenshin said.

"Well, that's the problem. If he did, he certainly cleaned up after himself. Or I guess it could have been a woman. There was only one cushion, and that was the one he was lying over. And there was only one cup. It hadn't spilled at all."

"Poison then," Kaoru assumed from the door, where she'd snatched a robe and pulled it about her body. Tying it tightly, she joined the others in the main room.

Lukas sighed and slumped over, resting his elbows on the floor in front of him and his head in his hands. "We can't prove it. The cup was empty. But there's no doubt about it. I wish I could say there wasn't a mark on him, but I could have sworn that he'd been dead for a week or so."

Suddenly remembering he wasn't just talking to Sano, he looked at Yahiko and Kaoru and started spluttering about apologies and inappropriate comments and phrasing, a courtesy that only won him a light tap on the head from his friend, who was leaning against the wall right behind him.

"Oh, cut it out, Lukas, the little missy and the kid are tougher than you think. What else?"

"Well, there's not much left to tell. That's about it. Your turn now, Sano. Did you see anyone out and about last night?"

"Should he have?" Yahiko asked. "Wasn't he in here?"

"Heh…No, not exactly, kid."

"Where'd you go, Sano?" From anyone else, it would have sounded like an interrogation. It was hard, however, to take offense at any question spoken in that casual tone in Kenshin's voice.

Sano drew himself up, hair reaching for the ceiling and almost finding it. "I," he said proudly, "won a bet."

"You what?" said Kaoru and Yahiko, in almost perfect unison, staring at him in deliberately exaggerated surprise (because teasing Sanosuke was a prerogative of anyone who knew him).

Kenshin, of course, said "Oro."

"Hey, why does everyone look so surprised?" Sano asked, more amused than outraged by the shock on their faces (so the teasing was in vain except for the spirit of the tradition). "Aren't I allowed to win a bet once in a while?"

"Well, yeah," said Yahiko. "Once in a while."

Having been well and truly awakened now, Sano grabbed Yahiko in a headlock and proceeded to ruffle his hair in all directions with a clenched fist, ignoring the boy's yelps of indignation and fury.

Even Lukas managed a chuckle, but he quickly restated his question. "Did you see anyone, Sano? This is important, put the kid down."

Under his serious look, Sano released Yahiko and promptly received a sharp tug on the ends of his bandana before the culprit was sternly ordered to sit down and be quiet. Resettling the disturbed band, Sano thought.

He and Lukas hadn't seen each other for a couple of years, so they'd gotten together once his broken-nosed friend had gotten off duty and caught up on old times. Almost like Yahiko, Lukas had been a half-wild street kid for several years, and he and Sano's paths had crossed in the city any handful of times. The then-fight merchant hadn't kept track of him after he'd run away to sea and they'd only met up a few times when his friend's ship (whichever he was working on that month) had come into the harbor.

After quite a few rounds of card games, shogi, and spirited remember-when's, Sano had headed back to his shared cabin, vaguely hoping that Kenshin and the brat would already be asleep. He had felt faintly like he was sneaking in after curfew, and, starting to hum (off-key) an old song to make himself feel better, spent too much mental energy on the lyrics and took a wrong turn in the darkened corridors.

(Note: Did they have card games in Meiji Japan? They must have…right?)

Once he realized that he was lost, he had smacked himself upside the head, called himself seven different types of idiot and a lousy card player for good measure even though he'd won only a _little_ under half of the games, and wandered around until he could identify where he was, reasoning somewhat illogically that as long as he was lost, he couldn't really get lost again. It really was quite dark, no one having seen any need to leave a lamp where no one was supposed to be, but he could guess easily enough after having tripped over the fourth box that he was in a cargo bay or hold of some kind. Well, actually the last had been a barrel, but _that_ was not the point, he reminded himself.

"I couldn't see a thing down there, so at first I thought I'd just find my way out by feel, because dammit if I was going to yell for help," Sano rationalized to his audience. "And so I found a wall—" He stopped short as a faint echo of a high-pitched shriek reached the little cabin. "Um, what was that?"

Lukas rose and stuck his head out the door. Looking up and down the corridor, he shook his head. "Captain Orestes was going to speak to the girl—what's her name—Kelila? Yeah. In light of her grandfather-in-law's death, condolences…glad that's not my job. Swear the girl doesn't have anything on her mind but her husband-to-be and the family inheritance." He caught their looks. "Oh, damn. Inheritance. You think she's our first suspect?" With a scowl, he added regretfully, "I heard it said somewhere up north that poison was a woman's weapon."

"Not always," Kenshin said, and that seemed to settle that. Lukas sat back on his heels after closing the door again as Sanosuke tapped his fingers on the deck impatiently.

"You want me to keep going or do you wanna figure stuff out with what you've got?"

"Right, sorry, Sano. Go on," the sailor said hurriedly. "So you found a wall."

"I moved along it, going pretty slow because my feet and shins were already sore. As it turned out, I was going away from the door in the end. Know how I found that out?"

Brief silence, broken only by the faintest echo of screeches, reigned.

"Girl's not going to have a voice to scream with at this rate," Lukas muttered. "All right, Sano, I'll bite. How did you find that out?"

"Someone came in, and they were smart enough to bring a lamp. And guess what? I say they because there were two—least, I saw two shadows. I'm not quite sure, but I could say that they looked an awful lot like Ruthyas and his wife Meirai."

"Are you sure?" Kaoru asked.

"No," Sano said firmly. "But they're the most likely for the silhouettes that I saw."

"What did you do when you saw them?" Lukas asked.

Sano scratched at the back of his head. "Well, I thought about going over to them and confessing I was lost, but then I felt kinda stupid and just tried to sneak past them. I dunno why I was so worried. If I couldn't see them very well, how were they going to see me? They were more interested in the barrels anyway."

"Barrels?" Lukas repeated, perking up a little bit. "There were barrels?"

"Yes, I said that. Barrels."

"All right, then I know where you were. There's only one hold on _Praxidikae_ right now that has barrels in it, and those belong to the merchant."

"His name's Tydeus, right?" Kaoru confirmed. "We didn't meet him yet."

"Doubt you will," Lukas shrugged. "I swear he hasn't come out of his room since he came on board."

"Maybe he's seasick," suggested Yahiko glumly.

"Go on, Sano," Kenshin said over Yahiko's grumbling.

"So they stood there and examined the barrels and I sneaked on past them," Sano continued his story. "But then the ship pitched and the lantern fell, and of course it went out. And I was not going back in there, so I came back here. And fell asleep somehow. Damn ship was going up and down something awful."

"Yeah, sea got rough last night," Lukas said absently. "So, Ruthyas and Meirai were out and about last night. Got it."

"That doesn't make them the murderers, though," Kenshin reminded him.

"Yeah! I mean, no, no it doesn't. I mean, I was up last night, but that doesn't mean I went and poisoned that old dude."

"You just hang onto that reassurance," Lukas said grimly. "The captain's going to want to know all this, and I'm going to have to mention you were awake last night. I don't believe you did it, Sano, but right now, everyone's a suspect."

He pulled himself to his feet. "I don't suppose any of you were around Sessui's cabin last night?" He got the negatives he'd expected. "Damn."

"You said there was a cup of tea out?" Kaoru asked thoughtfully, a frown creasing her face.

"Not exactly," Lukas corrected her, pausing in the act of opening the door. "There was a cup, but it was completely empty."

"What did it look like?"

"The cup?"

"Yes, the cup."

Lukas shrugged, a definitely baffled expression in his pale eyes. "Plain. Grey. Not dyed grey, but naturally grey. Chip in the rim, long black crack down the side. Pretty old, probably. Why?"

"Meirai likes tea."

The sailor thought it over. "So do I. So does four-fifths of Japan. The other fifth prefers sake," he added as an aside. "It is polite to offer tea to a guest. That's not proof of anything."

"No," she admitted. "But it's a link."

"Yeah," Lukas said softly. "It's a start."

**

* * *

**

They spent the rest of that morning and most of the afternoon in the little pair of cabins that they were to spend the journey in, passing the time as best they could. Snacking on dry food that they'd brought on board, the four talked nervously, trading theories about what could possibly have happened until Kaoru noticed while attempting to comb her hair out of the nightly knots that sneaked in despite the braid that they were repeating the same ideas for "at _least_ the third time, probably more".

They spent the rest of that morning and most of the afternoon in the little pair of cabins that they were to spend the journey in, passing the time as best they could. Snacking on dry food that they'd brought on board, the four talked nervously, trading theories about what could possibly have happened until Kaoru noticed while attempting to comb her hair out of the nightly knots that sneaked in despite the braid that they were repeating the same ideas for "at the third time, probably more". 

And that was the signal that everyone needed to get up and do something productive. Sort of. After a comparison of room sizes, which took a very short time indeed, Kaoru and Yahiko commandeered the main room to train as best they could in such a small space. Shoveling bags and futons forcibly to the wall to clear a space, Kaoru soon remembered that she had two not-so-willing helpers and drafted Sanosuke and Kenshin into moving the stuff into the other room, with the excuse of creating as much free square footage as possible despite the fact that it didn't clear _that_ much floor.

"What are we going to do when we need it all _back_?" Sanosuke had to ask.

He soon regretted it. "Well then," she said happily, grinning at his groan, "you can just move it back again, can't you?"

After Kaoru had been given the minute and a half she needed to change into training whites and tie her hair up a little tighter in its ponytail, she assumed the personality of Drill Sergeant Kaoru and banished Kenshin and Sanosuke to the other room while she and Yahiko attempted to trounce each other with _shinai_.

"She's in full cry this morning," Sano observed wryly over a game of _shogi_ as Kaoru audibly thwacked her student with a triumphant yell. This was shortly followed by Yahiko's cry of offended pride, and the inevitable "Ugly!"

Kenshin winced noticeably. "This one hopes that they won't get told off for being too loud."

"Nah, I doubt it."

The redhead nodded absently and propped his chin on one hand, examining the _shogi_ board through narrow eyes. Narrowed eyes quickly became drooping ones as last night's lack of sleep—at least, peaceful sleep— caught up with him. Sano, it must be mentioned, didn't notice, familiar with his friend's patience and paying more attention to the chaos behind the door.

Kenshin had seen when Sano came in, having been awake but pretending to be asleep, and it was indeed after the water had become a lot rougher than it had been before. So that much was true. He knew Sano wasn't a liar.

"Wake me," the former fight merchant had announced to an apparently not listening room, "when we get to Kyoto." And then he had tossed a pack of cards, kept together by a piece of string that had seen better days and was probably in truth a strip of wrist-wrap, in the general direction of his bag. It had, thankfully, missed a collision with Kenshin, who was sitting against the wall, nominally asleep, just below the rack. He didn't think he would have been able to feign sleep any longer if that had happened.

Sano had flopped into his futon without another word wasted on the supposedly deaf air, leaving Kenshin to sit awake for maybe another hour. His skin itched with the heat. Moving didn't help; neither did scratching. All either did was drive him slowly insane. It was too bad, he thought idly, that it was too late in the year for snow. Snow would have been nice; he liked snow if he didn't have to be out in it for too long. Then his feet got cold. Sandals weren't very insulating, even with _tabi_ socks. Those just got wet. He hated wet feet a just a little bit less than wet cold feet. The only thing worse was being wet and cold everywhere…and bleeding, now he thought of it. He'd suffered both last winter. Only without the bleeding. That must have been just before he'd met Kaoru. Wasn't it? Or was he thinking of something else? He'd gotten _lost_ in the snow once, but he'd been just a kid. And it wasn't really his fault…oh, wait, yes it had been. But he'd fervently denied it. Not that Master Hiko had believed him. Of course he hadn't, it had been a lie…

Somewhere along there he must have dropped off to sleep, but he couldn't have pinpointed where if his life depended on it.

It was snowing in the streets. Some of the time. Falling rain, hail, and soba noodles took up the rest of the time.

He followed a younger Sessui, who was chatting under his breath to his battle-partner, who accompanied the five of them to the inn where they were staying. The third man had no face, only a sheet of black cloth, while Sessui's face was blurry almost to the point of being unrecognizable, a condition exacerbated by the fact that his body was that of a skeleton in dark blue robes. The two men that the three swordsmen were escorting were merely formless shapes of swirling shadows in white clothing.

As the soba noodles fell, he glanced around, running his hands over the hilts of the swords at his waist. Through the walls, he saw a horde of people, marching in step and waving flags, the symbol upon which being indistinguishable due to the walls in the way and the darkness, not to mention the rain.

_they're coming for me_

He had to tell them; had to tell them that they were coming. They had to turn around. They had to go back. They had to know!

_coming for_

Red threads coiled around him, holding him still, all but his feet, which kept moving forward. They wound across his arms, binding them to his swords, hands covered in the crimson threads. He tried to cry out, to get their attention. They had to know they had to see why didn't they why

_coming to_

The shadows came through the walls and coils of rope and wire and the longest noodles he'd ever seen and fishing line flew from their hands to tie him tighter than ever before. And they saw, they finally saw, and they screamed and ran because

_no, no, no_

couldn't breathe and couldn't fight could only run why didn't he stay why how dare he run away and leave me how dare how could he abandon me

_I understand_

now

_when?_

then

_who?_

"Hey! Kenshin!"

Kenshin jerked awake as Sano snapped his fingers under his nose, tumbling backwards in surprise. One flailing hand knocked a piece halfway across the room (not a great distance, admittedly) to ricochet of two corners in quick succession. By great good luck, or maybe just sheer coincidence, and the roll of the ship, it ended up by Sano's foot, where he stepped on it as he leaned backwards to sit back down from awakening Kenshin.

He failed to even smile slightly at the yelp and resultant curse from Sanosuke on behalf of the offended foot. "Sorry," the redhead said at a barely audible level, hanging his head.

"You all right, Kenshin?" Sanosuke asked, rubbing at his foot and restoring the game piece to its original position on the board. "You look real whacked. Your eyes are sunk straight back in your head, did you know that?" He hadn't. "Not sleeping?"

"Not well," Kenshin admitted reluctantly. "A few nightmares about things that never happened." Noodles and string?

Sano raised both of his eyebrows in a universal gesture for _Is that so?_ "I'm getting tired of blaming things on the weather, so I won't. How come, you think?"

The _rurouni_ sighed and rested his chin on interwoven hands. "This one knows—knew—Sessui."

"Really? From where?"

"The Revolution," Kenshin admitted. "He joined this one on many a patrol."

_but he ran away_

"Oh," Sano said. "Shoulda guessed. When was the last time you saw him? Before yesterday, I mean."

Kenshin opened his mouth to answer, and then closed it. Brow furrowing, he blinked at Sano, who returned his puzzled expression, slightly unnerved by the look on his friend's face. For a moment, he looked afraid.

"This one can't remember…" he said, barely audible.

_it_ hurts _and I can't_

Troubled by the lost look on Kenshin's face, the younger man made haste to brush off his lapse in memory. "Aah, I'm sure it doesn't matter. Did you know him well?"

Wordlessly, Kenshin shook his head negatively. "Didn't talk to many people," he whispered, sounding more and more lost. "Afraid of this one…" He stared rigidly at a nonexistent spot on the bulkhead. "Or hated me…" he added, too quietly to hear.

_get as far away as possible_

Unless, of course, you were sitting where Sano was and listening closely, both of which he was. Reflexively, he sucked in a breath in shock. Kenshin rarely spoke in the first person. Why, he wasn't exactly sure. What he was sure of was that when the former hitokiri _did_, it was generally Bad News.

But right now, Kenshin looked far too spaced out to go into Battle Mode. Right now, he looked more likely to curl up into a ball and whimper. He was already partway there, hugging his knees up to his chest and pulling his shoulders in. One hand worked its way loose and clung to the hilt of his sakabato like a lifeline, like it was his sole grip on reality.

"Kenshin? Are you all right?" he asked urgently, leaning forward over the forgotten _shogi_ board. And if he stepped on another piece, too bad. "Kenshin. Hey!"

Shuddering, the redhead looked up, failing to meet Sanosuke's eyes directly. Although the blank look hadn't left his face, his eyes were the normal purple.

Well, 'normal' being relative with Kenshin.

Sano scowled and stood up, taking a few steps toward the door and yanking it open. "Hey, missy."

Kaoru paused halfway through a stroke used in tripping her opponent, in this case Yahiko. Taken by surprise, she glared at him. Yahiko, equally disconcerted by her sudden stop, tripped anyway, sprawling flat on the floor.

"Missy, get in here. Problem." Kaoru was much better suited to putting off one of Kenshin's breakdowns than he was.

"What—" she started, standing in the doorway for only a brief second. She paused, gasped.

"Kenshin! Kenshin!" He'd buried his face in his knees again, shaking like the last autumn leaf. His knuckles, on the hilt of his reversed sword, were bone white. Looking closer, Sano realized that he'd drawn it an inch or so and had reached his other hand over to run it back and forth mindlessly across the blunt edge.

Kaoru knelt beside him, frightened. She knew he had unstable moments from time to time, but before now they had always been in the midst of battle. She'd never seen him do this, but she knew that it had to be for a good reason.

Speaking to him as she would a frightened child, she said firmly, "Kenshin, look at me. Look at me. Tell me what's wrong. Let me help."

Reaching for his right hand, she managed to pull it off the sword blade.

"Look at me."

Slowly, he uncurled just enough to fix one eye on hers.

"Let me help you. Tell me how."

He shook his head. Nononononono.

"Why not?" She managed not to snap.

"…more dead…"

"I don't understand you. Tell me."

He managed to relax enough to say audibly. "There will be more dead soon."

"How do you know?" she asked, puzzled. But on the plus side, that had been a complete sentence. That was at least progress.

"Dreamed it." He paused, realizing that had broken the 'complete-statement' rule, and looked away, speaking to the floor. "This one dreamed it. Just now. It was so dark down there."

"Where, Kenshin?" She put one hand on his cheek and gently made him look back at her.

He shook his head again, indicating that he didn't know, then leaned closer to her. "Two," he whispered in her ear. Then pulled away.

"Kenshin, I don't understand." She'd never seen him act anything like this.

He leaned forward again as if imparting a great and terrible secret.

"This one, neither."

She doubted _he_ even understood that one, so she didn't ask. Nor did she get the chance. Before she could phrase another question, there came the sound of a fist rapping on the door firmly.

"Yahiko, could you get that?" she requested, looking away from Kenshin briefly and past Sanosuke, who was leaning with both arms against the doorframe.

The boy nodded without any of his usual comments and took the few paces to the door, pulling it open.

"It's Lukas," he announced unnecessarily, as the sailor himself entered.

Kaoru shuddered as Kenshin visibly pulled away from Lukas' presence and the news he carried. Her premonition proved true as Lukas informed them grimly,

"We found another man dead in the cargo bay."

**

* * *

**

**Author's Note: **Kudos to AbeoUmbra, who knew approximately what 'Praxidikae' meant. Did anyone else get it and didn't bother to tell me? For your edification, it was, in classic Greek mythology, one of the titles of the three Furies, who were the 'punishment of sinners' and Wrath. A quote from Bulfinch's Mythology (online) reads "those who walk in darkness. Weeping tears of blood and hissing with hair of vipers, they would descend like a storm…" 'Praxidikae' translates as 'the Vengeful Ones'. And just because I'm a trivia jerk, what does the chapter title refer to?


	5. Slipknot

**Chapter Five: Slipknot**

**Author's Note: **Ok, I finally got it written. Hard to go back to _Rurouni Kenshin_ when you've watched _X-Men _three nights running. (I'm _hooked_. Don't like the recent third one very much, though. It 'read' like a fanfiction. Y'know, license to kill a third of the main characters and perform wild tying together of previously nonexistant loose ends...) I hit a 'brick wall crossing' halfway through (guess where!). **Note: **Phrase and concept of 'brick wall crossing' is copyright **Panthergirl**, who writes hysterical Spyro the Dragon fics.

**Warning: **Contains lots of blood, yelling, and some measure of slinking around. Also, may contain quantities of Misao.

**Disclaimer:** _If I owned RuroKen…_this wouldn't be a fanfiction by definition.

**ON WITH THE SHOW!**

_The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four (people) is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you._ —Rita Mae Brown

Various exclamations of surprise accompanied Lukas' dire statement from everyone except Kenshin, who stared at him in subdued horror.

"Who was it?" Kaoru managed to ask coherently, not rising from her place next to the shaking Kenshin.

"Our first mate, Tawan," Lukas said grimly, taking a few steps further into the room. "Captain Orestes sent him down to the cargo bay where you got lost, Sano."

"Alone?" Yahiko protested the stupidity of the action. "With a murderer on board?"

"Of course not!" the pale-eyed sailor snapped back. "He had another crewman with him. Markus was sent back up to tell the captain that there was something he needed to see. When they got back, they found him dead, propped up against a chest."

"Not a mark on him, I suppose," assumed Sano. "No trace of another person."

Lukas laughed sardonically, a single bark of humorless mirth. "Hardly. There was blood everywhere. It had leaked into the chest, too; that silk's ruined. If that's not a sign of less than natural causes, I challenge you to find me an indication that is." He shuddered, flicking his fingers as if to get the blood off. Sano put a hand on his shoulder roughly in an effort to give him what meager comfort he could, and the young man nodded and smiled weakly at his friend. "Whoever did it has moved on from poison, that's for sure."

"What was he cut with? A knife?" Yahiko asked. "Didn't someone say that they'd heard the sound of a knife fight? In Sessui's cabin, just before he was found, remember?"

"I remember, kid." Lukas sat down against the wall, still moving his hands reflexively. "But no knife's that long and sharp. From what I saw before the captain sent me up here to you guys, there's only one weapon that could have killed him, and that's—"

"A katana." The voice was Kenshin's, faint, stressed, and ghostly. He didn't even look up, but renewed his grip on Kaoru's hand as if it was his only lifeline to sanity. His other hand tensed on his sakabato's hilt.

"It looked like it." Lukas' voice was as hard as stone. He looked across the room and at Kenshin properly for the first time. "Are you all right?" Seeing the tension in the redhead's arms, he looked down and saw Kenshin's sakabato anew.

"Shit!" the sailor yelped, jumping to his feet as if stung by the largest bee in the universe. "When did you get down to the cargo bay!"

"What?" the other three said, roughly in unison.

"Lukas, you're talking nonsense!" Sano scolded him curtly.

"Kenshin hasn't left the room all morning!" Yahiko defended his friend. "Where do you get off accusing him of something he would never do?"

Kaoru merely glared daggers at the sailor after her first indignant cry. He visibly shrunk, but only a little bit. He rallied himself soon enough.

"How do you explain that sword then?" he almost yelped, raising his hands slightly as they balled themselves into fists.

Kaoru left off trying to roast the man with the force of her stare alone in order to try to tug the sakabato away from Kenshin, hoping to resolve this the easiest way possible—presenting Lukas with evidence that Kenshin could not have killed a man with it, even if he would have in the first place. She ran into problems almost instantly, however. Kenshin had almost a literal death grip on the weapon, and try as she might, she couldn't pull his fingers off of the hilt. She was hampered, too, by only having one free hand, for the frightened redhead had taken possession of her right hand, and didn't seem too disposed to give it back anytime soon.

As she expended fruitless effort, Lukas was placed under attack from two sides, and was forced to defend himself against Yahiko and Sanosuke, who had taken offense on behalf of their friend and were explaining at the top of their lungs, leaving out some important things—like Kenshin's past identity, as that was no business of Lukas'—but generally getting the point across quite well.

"How am I supposed to believe all this?" he yelled back at the two standing only a handful of feet away from him.

"Because I thought you weren't entirely stupid!" Sano roared back. "I don't lie!"

"Because it's the _truth_, you numbskull!" Yahiko screamed. His voice cracked slightly on the last syllable, inspiring both Sanosuke and Lukas to give him almost identical strange looks. "What? I'm ten!" he added.

In the brief vacuum of silence created by this sudden non sequitur, Kenshin spoke up for the first time since Lukas had come in. "Ask the two crewmen whom you have outside the door. They will attest that no one has left this room for more than three minutes."

Lukas blinked at him in surprise. "What crewmen?" he blurted.

Yahiko was a little quicker on the uptake. "You posted _guards_?" he said, slightly quieter but still offended. "You suspected _us?_"

"Not me!" Lukas volleyed back. "And everyone's a suspect!"

"But not anymore," Kenshin, who seemed to be recovering, added. He still didn't surrender his sword to Kaoru, who gave up without even getting an acknowledgement of her efforts. "With their word that no one in this room has had time to go down to the cargo bay and murder First Mate Tawan, no one here should be under suspicion."

Lukas scratched his head awkwardly. "Yeah…" he muttered finally, "…seems so…" Recovering his dignity from the scraps it had been left in after having been screamed at _en masse_ and making a major mistake in his accusation of Kenshin, he asked as an afterthought, "How did you know they were there?"

"This one sensed their presence some time ago," Kenshin admitted, loosening his grip on Kaoru's hand. "It became suspicious after they lingered for more than ten minutes."

Thoroughly chastened now, Lukas shifted his feet in place, looking down at them. "That's a useful skill," he commented unnecessarily. Obviously looking for a way out, he said hurriedly, "Well, I thought you guys should know. I'll just be off now…"

"Are you returning to the cargo bay?" Kenshin asked, now completely back to (relative) normal.

"Yes, the captain ordered me to return…not that there's much I can do," he admitted.

"This one is coming."

Yet another chorus of 'What?' made itself known to all concerned.

"This one is going," Kenshin told his friends. "This one needs to know."

Know what?

"Are you all right now, Kenshin?" Kaoru asked as he rose, releasing her hand entirely.

He gave her one of his familiar all's-well-with-the-world-or-at-least-I'm-pretending-it-is smiles. "Yes, Kaoru-dono, thank you."

She scowled faintly, still worried about him. Kaoru had never seen him so frightened before, and she never wanted to see him like that again. To see her strong, usually controlled _rurouni_ shake with terror like a traumatized child (and what _had_ he been so afraid of?) was something that she'd never imagined would happen, and she was somewhat sure that she wouldn't believe herself that it had happened in a couple of days. But she knew from experience that there was nothing she could do. Kaoru was fairly convinced that it was a passably bad idea for him to go and investigate a murder scene, but she was totally sure that it would be a completely useless effort to try to stop him.

He would listen carefully to her objections, nod understandingly, smile sweetly, and do whatever the heck he felt like anyway. It was irritating; it was Kenshin. His master, Hiko Seijuro, had once called him a 'stubborn mule'. Although she, Yahiko, and Misao had protested volubly, Kaoru had been forced to admit, in the silence of her mind, that he'd had a point. If Kenshin said that he was going, he would, in the end, go.

So she didn't try to stop him. Instead, she took the next best option. "Then I'm coming too."

Kaoru was faintly surprised that he hadn't seen that coming. Hadn't she followed him to Kyoto? Didn't she track him down in one of the largest cities in Japan? (She was forced to admit to herself that that had been luck, but she wouldn't have admitted that to him even if he'd asked.) Wouldn't she do it again?

Ignoring his token protest, she marched past Sano and snatched her _shinai_ from where it had fallen on the floor, tossed down from the wall by the roll of the ship. "Let's go then," she said.

He gave up—not that he'd had a choice. It wasn't often that they butted heads over things, but one of them usually gave in quickly. Usually, she observed, it was Kenshin. Whether or not he would win if he actually stood up to her was not something she really wanted to think about—chances were pretty good that she would lose.

"I don't know about this," Lukas said, having suddenly found himself with at least two extra companions—and how likely were Sano and Yahiko to stay behind?

Not very. Despite his objections, ("Would you like to stop them?" Kenshin asked curiously) Kenshin, Kaoru, Sano, and Yahiko all trooped down in his wake to the cargo bay—the murder scene.

Sano almost didn't recognize the bay when they arrived, dodging an intermittent stream of crewmen lugging barrels, evidently heavy ones, for there were two men, usually panting or sweating, to each barrel. The reasons for its unfamiliarity were clear. Although it was the same large hold that he'd gotten lost in last night, it was now fully lit and occupied by a hive of active people, who dodged around barrels, moved barrels, scrubbed at the floor with porous stones and what smelled an awful lot like lye, carried in new buckets of soapy salt water, carried out old pails of blood-contaminated salt water, and stood looking ominous before being curtly dismissed by a tall man with a shaggy beard and air of authority who stood supervising the entire chaotic scramble and could be none other than Captain Orestes.

By Orestes' feet, a small, scrawny man knelt over the body, lower pant-legs stained in the drying blood that had sprayed all over the scene. Tawan had been of average height and typical Japanese complexion, and his frame was powerful through many years serving on ships. His hands were callused and burned by ropes.

All his experience had done him no good against the person who had killed him. It was obvious (or so the three people who practiced _kenjutsu_ thought) that it had been a katana that had struck the killing blow. The blade had struck downwards through his left shoulder, driving a gash through almost to his waist. His eyes had been closed by the doctor, evidently the thin man who was now forced to work as a mortician, but a thin trail of dried blood from a relatively small puncture still ran down his throat and onto his bared chest, which had been powerfully muscled before being split in two by a very sharp sword.

"Gods," Kaoru whispered in revulsion, but renewed her determination to stay. After all, Kenshin, beside her, had a look of growing shock and horror spreading slowly across his face. She bridged the small distance between them and took his hand again. He squeezed it reassuringly despite his own fear. Let him think that she was the one needing comfort.

Kenshin scanned the room analytically, trying to see the room from a killer's point of view. Although inch of his body quailed at the thought, he locked his disgust behind iron self-control and assumed as dispassionate a bearing as possible.

"Did the crewman Markus see First Mate Tawan as he received orders to go to you, Captain?" Kenshin asked, noting the way the blood had spattered. Where Orestes was standing, there were no blood spatters, nor crewmen trying to scrub them up. Also, the floor bore no signs of a dedicated scouring, such as would be necessary to cleanse the wood of blood.

Orestes turned around and nailed Kenshin with a look, no doubt wondering whom the heck this little fire-haired man was and why he would ask such a question. Kenshin stared back, not intimidated. If everyone who was taller than him daunted him, after all, there weren't many adults he would be able to stand up to.

Apparently satisfied by the results of his scrutiny, Orestes rumbled, "Yes, and he claims that Tawan was excited rather than angry."

"As he no doubt would have been, had he discovered a murderer," Kenshin filled in.

If the captain resented Kenshin showing up and asking for details, he gave no sign of it. "Tawan was highly offended by the death of Tarukare Sessui," he said with an emphatic nod. "He was eager to find who had done it and bring them to justice."

"Then perhaps his excitement was due to some other factor," Kenshin suggested.

"Unrelated to Tarukare's death? Perhaps. What do you suggest?"

Kenshin put his head on one side slightly and thought for a moment. "Some irregularity with the cargo," he suggested after a few seconds.

"That is also possible. No one had come to check on the freight until today, when Tawan proposed that there might be a stowaway on board."

"Leading him straight to his death." Sano snorted. "What a bright idea."

Orestes' eyes flashed, and he leveled a large finger at Sano. "Tawan was my first mate for many years and a man of honor and loyalty. If you cannot respect his memory, you will leave." The even tone carried more than a touch of menace.

Sanosuke blinked, nodded, and shut up in quick succession.

"However," Kenshin continued, sending Sano a warning glance, "what you say is not entirely true." At Orestes' glance, inviting him to elaborate, he complied, saying, "There were other visitors to this hold last night."

"Yes, Lukas has told me of testimony implying that the man Ruthyas and his wife came down here. Do you suggest that they performed some wrongdoing involving this shipment?"

"This one suggests it as a possibility only," Kenshin amended, shying from accusing them straight-out. "However, Ruthyas-san has spoken of his dislike for Tydeus-san before, and Sessui-san, last afternoon, mentioned that Tydeus's profits have almost ruined Ruthyas."

"I have been acquainted with Ruthyas before this voyage," Orestes claimed. "Neither he nor his wife could have done this." He pointed downward, unnecessarily, at the dead man at his feet.

Kenshin nodded, conceding the point. "This one," he added hurriedly, "could not have done it either." Preempting the inevitable demand concerning his sakabato, he drew it and offered the hilt to Orestes so that the captain could examine it.

The large man did examine it, in great detail. "Accepted," he grunted finally, handing it back. "It is a fine sword," he added as Kenshin re-sheathed it. The _rurouni_ nodded, acknowledging the compliment.

"Go back to your cabin," Orestes then ordered the group from the Kamiya dojo as a whole. "Leave it no more than is needed. Food will be brought to you when men can be spared. There will be a watch in the corridors of that deck, as there will be at all key points aboard ship. If there is further news, I will send Lukas to you."

The four nodded, agreeing with his commands, and, not without a last stare at the scene, turned to go. As they paused to let another pair of barrel-bearers precede them into the corridor, Kenshin turned back to Orestes.

"Captain," he called, hurrying back to his side, "does anyone know what did that?"

Orestes followed his pointing finger to Tawan's chest. Besides the horrific slash, there was a mark much resembling a burn that had appeared in the center of his torso, reaching almost from shoulder to shoulder. However, unlike a burn, it seemed almost shriveled, like the flesh on a desiccated mummy, and was a dirty grey.

The big man scowled. It looked roughly like a thunderstorm. "No," he admitted finally. Seemingly annoyed by his lack of information, he turned away from Kenshin, dismissing him through body language if not with words. Kenshin took the hint, crossing the bay again to join his friends at the door.

Kenshin didn't say a word until they had reached their cabins and shut the door tightly, although Yahiko more than made up for it.

"What a blow that must have been," the young samurai said as the door closed. "I've never seen anything like it before."

"Yes, Yahiko, you have," Kenshin said grimly.

"What? No, something like that, I'd remember!"

"You do not recognize it," Kenshin corrected him, having gotten the attention of Kaoru and Sanosuke as well by this time, "because you have never seen that strike meant to kill."

"Kenshin, what are you saying?" Sano asked, disturbed by the strange note in his shorter friend's voice.

Shaking his head in helpless, useless disbelief, the _rurouni_ said darkly, "That was _Ryutsuisen_. This one would stake his life on it."

**

* * *

**

Kenshin, predictably, refused to follow up that statement in any useful way, shape, or form.

"That's impossible," Yahiko blurted.

Kenshin merely answered, "Yes."

That wasn't very helpful.

But when he thought about it, Yahiko had to admit that it bore all the marks of Kenshin's favorite strike, and he'd seen it enough to be able to mimic it with comparable results. Kenshin had refused to teach him, so he'd merely learned a different way round.

"How would the swordsman get enough air space, though?" Yahiko asked, remembering an only rather-disastrous mid-battle experiment with a learned-by-watching _Ryutsuisen_, a door, and several rounds of dynamite not long ago, during the course of which he'd been propelled dozens of feet into the air.

This managed to impress an answer (of a sort) out of Kenshin. "It's possible to achieve the requisite force without leaping high into the air and using the downward velocity to add weight to the blade," he commented. Despite his breakdown of earlier, he seemed perfectly composed.

Seemed. Kaoru, watching the closest, could see the glaze that covered his eyes and the tension in his stance. For him, she guessed, this was like the past coming back to bite him in a very personal way. She didn't even want to guess how many people he'd seen killed by that same stroke, delivered by his hands. He'd spent ten years trying to get away from that specter, and here it was again.

"Must be a hell of a sharp katana," Sanosuke muttered, shooting an edgy glance at the door. "Not to mention one skilled swordsman."

"Thus we come full circle," Kaoru said. "Who else could know _Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu_ besides you, Kenshin? The only other person I can think of is your master Hiko, and _he's_ certainly not here." The ego level of the ship, she thought rather spitefully, was too low. "We would have noticed, surely."

"The master is _not_ on board," Kenshin said firmly, a note of panic creeping into his voice at the very thought. They didn't get along terribly well; granted, they hadn't tried to rip each other's heads off, but that was because Hiko was that much bigger than his former student, who was usually the one idly wishing for the chance.

"But why him?" Kenshin wondered aloud, changing the subject quickly. "How is he connected to Sessui-san? Why were they both killed?"

"The guy was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's all," Sanosuke said with a shrug.

Kenshin frowned. "That simple?"

"Sure, why not?"

"Kenshin," Kaoru started tentatively, "you didn't, well, _recognize _Tawan, did you? I thought, maybe, if you remembered Sessui-san, then maybe..." She trailed off. "No...no way."

"It's a good suggestion," the redhead reassured her, "except for this one has no memory of him whatsoever."

"Oh," Kaoru said, relieved at the idea that there wasn't a homicidal madman targeting people connected to Kenshin--if there was, they'd all be in royal trouble.

"The problem is," Kenshin begun, before being interrupted by Sano.

"Oh, we have another problem?"

"Yes. The problem is that this is completely impossible."

"But...it's happening," Kaoru pointed out, crossing her arms over her chest stubbornly.

"That is why," Kenshin repeated, "it is a problem."

And the conversation went nowhere after that. Kenshin stuck to his statement of impossibility no matter how many times Sanosuke and Yahiko tried to get around it. Kaoru dropped out of the argument early on and merely sat watching, trying to figure out some of her own ideas. However, each time she tried to take the evidence of the _Ryutsuisen_ into account, she kept running up against Kenshin's conclusion--it was impossible.

But it was happening. Had happened. Would happen? Had been happening, has been happening, will happen, might happen...

Her head swam, thoughts spiralling into total confusionn, and she rested her forehead in linked palms for a few seconds. A nauseous feeling churned her stomach into painful knots, and her vision, such as it was through eyes suddenly squinted half-shut in nausea, darkened, little spots such as the ones created when standing up too fast filling her field of vision.

(**Author's Note:** The standing-up-too-fast phenomenon is called _orthostatic hypotension_, and is caused by a sudden lowering of blood pressure, caused by rising from a seated position after extended periods of time without moving much. I had no idea how to work this into the manuscript text, but felt like sharing it with you anyway. From a Star Trek novel, to me, to you. Now go impress someone with your new medical knowledge. Then laugh. Evilness optional. I've done it. It's fun to see them stare. **--Le'letha **P.S. Everyone knows that a restroom at sea is called a head, right? Just checking.)

"What was that?" Sano groaned, just outside her field of vision. She managed to look up without too much risk of losing everything she'd eaten that day and probably yesterday, and saw through narrowed eyes her three male companions, all seemingly affected, though not, she noticed, all in the same way.

Sano had his arms wrapped around himself, hands tucked into the long sleeves of his ever-present white jacket, face screwed up into an expression of discomfort. He was shivering as if just transported from the ice fields of the northern regions of the Continent, teeth chattering audibly. His nose, she noticed in a moment of clarity that lasted for less than a second, was blue, reinforcing the illusion that he'd been recently frozen.

Yahiko had also processed whatever they'd all sensed as nausea, but had had a much worse reaction to it than Kaoru, and had apparently lost the battle for his lunch. The door was still swinging in a crazy pattern from where he'd burst through it in a mad dash for the head.

She couldn't see Kenshin for a moment, then looked back down. Whatever it had been, it had affected him drastically. Collapsed in a heap against a gently rocking wall as if thrown there by some foe (Saito in particular sprang to mind), the swordsman stared into the middle distance, eyes glazed over completely now, making no effort to hold himself up. He was shaking slightly...or so she thought, before realizing the quiver was actually him shaking his head slightly.

_Nonononononononono_...

Kaoru vaguely realized that he'd gone into the same state of denial not long ago, and, past the nausea, something nagged at her to get up and go to him. She watched as his hands flickered, snapping out, snapping out, out roughly. Now what was that all about?

Before she could think about it, another wave of sickness pummelled her, and she gasped, automaticly raising a hand to cover her nose before she realized that she was doing it. Mastering the nausea, she realized why she'd reacted so.

She could smell blood, but not see it. It filled her nostrils, brushing away all other scents: wood oil she'd been using to polish her _bo-ken_ earlier, the smell of old wood from the walls, even the scent of her kimono. She couldn't even smell the ever-present salt water.

A sudden movement caught her eye. Sanosuke had slumped to the ground, eyes squinched shut, curling up into a ball to preserve body heat, still shivering. The faint 'thud' of his landing, which he made no effort to cushion, helped her to focus, using an extreme effort of will to pull herself to her knees.

Looking towards Kenshin again, she drew in a sharp breath, and instantly regretted it as the coppery stench invaded her mouth and throat as well. Gritting her teeth against it, though she could have sworn she could even _taste_ blood now, coating the crowns of her teeth, she managed to focus...not that it helped, as Kenshin himself...

From her point of view, she couldn't focus on Kenshin because Kenshin wasn't focused, color and presence fleeing from him like a prematurely aged photograph. The ends of his fingers had vanished into mist already, and his hands were following fast. Even his fire-bright hair seemed dimmed. As if energy was being drained from him, he slumped even further, sliding down the wall to land awkwardly on the floor.

That was the last she saw before passing out, falling spreadeagled not two inches from where she'd originally been sitting.

It was a few seconds before Kenshin could think coherently, his thoughts dissipating like ripples into water, and leveling out much the same way. The room blurred before him; though he could see Sano and Kaoru's respective predicaments, he was powerless to help them

_helpless and_

fading and he couldn't

_breathe, breathe, and_

stand up

_f_i_g_h_t_ i_t_

For a moment he saw the room from a slightly different perspective, about a foot to the right, with the porthole at his back, at the height he would be at were he standing, and facing the wall to his left, and to his shock he could see himself...almost. He was only about half there...where the other half had dissolved to, he didn't know.

He looked like a ghost, and when he looked down at himself, he looked like a ghost there too.

It was probably that surprise that saved him, jolted him back into his body, stopped him from drifting away, for that was what it had felt like.

Like he'd been in two places at once.

Reacting in fear and confusion, Kenshin leapt to his feet and drew his sword, not even thinking about if he still had it or not.

The First Rule: Never drop the weapon.

Right? Right.

Second Rule: (Third? He couldn't remember all of a sudden.) Because you cannot see the enemy does not mean there is no enemy.

"Who's there?" he called, scanning the room and hoping he'd get no answer.

The only answer he got was a faint echo off the cabin's walls..

"...'s th...?"

The shock of adrenaline leaving him in a rush, Kenshin staggered, leaning quite disrespectfully on his sword as he struggled to keep standing. Breathing deeply as a fresh breeze gusted in from the porthole, a vaguely familiar scent brushed into his nose. Too befuddled to think clearly, he couldn't place it in the few split seconds that it remained in the air before being blown away in the wind.

The sound of the door being opened, closely followed by a sound closely resembling 'thud', heralded Yahiko's return from the head. The 'thud' was caused by him collapsing not a foot into the room. Luckily, he had returned to his currently sun-browned color in place of the puce green pallor he had affected a few minutes earlier.

_Last one standing...always the last one standing..._

This was funny. Funny in an insane, unfunny way. Kenshin allowed himself a minute to laugh compulsively and breathily. It was something to do while he tried to sort out what else to do.

When he'd run out of breath and returned somewhat to his normal demeanor, he tried for a few seconds to wake Sano. The attempt failed miserably, and he settled for tugging the tall man into a more comfortable position than the headlong flop he'd collapsed into when he'd passed out.

Kaoru, he managed to move to her room. Lacking the strength to walk a straight line, much less carry her, he managed to achieve only a gentle tug on her arms, sliding her across the wooden floor, thanking the gods of floor-polishing that someone had thought to do so. He also added spur-of-the-moment thanks that it hadn't been him. Not that he minded polishing floors, but he had to have a good reason to, like, Kaoru had asked him to, or was standing over him with a broom and that terribly scary angry do-as-I-say-or-die-horribly look on her face, which was really a terribly intimidating look even though it was kind of--wait a second.

Kenshin lowered the unconcious Kaoru to the floor beside her bunk and rubbed his eyes forcefully, hoping to shake off the terrible lethargy that seized him. He couldn't focus on even a simple task, couldn't even keep a straight train of thought.

He did, however, remember to lift Kaoru the eleven inches (or so) to her bunk and put her down gently. At that point what little reserves he had left gave out. Eyes misting over and legs folding, he curled himself into a fairly small ball at the side of the bunk.

Just a second...no more than that.

His eyes lost interest in the middle of a long, slow blink, and didn't bother to open again.

He never even got to Yahiko. He'd fallen deeply unconcious himself long before that.

**

* * *

**

Kenshin dreamed. This was becoming normal.

_He walks down the halls of the _Praxidikae_, senses alert for the faintest trace of any human soul approaching. He thinks that most of them are either still in the cargo bay or at their posts, guiding and maintaining the ship. But he doesn't know, and he wants to._

_He could go down to the cargo bay and see if there's anyone there, but he hopes there isn't. He doesn't want to go down there ever again. He didn't know there'd be someone down there. What were they doing there anyway? He knew. Didn't he?_

_It bothers him that the man saw him. People hadn't seen him before. Only one person, and then only in a dream, and that was because that couldn't be helped._

_So he walks down the corridor in a fit of nervousness. He doesn't want to see or be seen. _

_The walls press around him like giant hands come to catch him and pull him back. He bares his teeth at them in a gesture older than mankind. The walls don't care, but they don't let up, either. Clutching at the sudden pain in his chest, brought on by fear and the shock in that cabin, he speeds up, almost dashing to the top deck to be out in the fresh air where the walls won't keep him trapped._

_He sees no one and no one sees him. He doesn't watch where he's going, more afraid of the walls now than the people. No one can stop him! No one! Nobody! He's running away and no one can ever catch him when he runs. He'll be safe if he just runs away fast enough._

_He emerges on deck in the shadow of a boiler, or something he thinks might be a boiler. It is big and cylindrical and metal and casts a shadow in the late evening not-quite-light that hides him perfectly. He's not afraid of the darkness._

_A faint ray of moonlight edges behind the maybe-a-boiler as he crouches there, watching the stars come out and the waves go up and down. Out there, there isn't anything he can see. No tracks on the trackless wastes, and he sees all of them, all the time, everywhere, and he doesn't want to. _

_The last time he checked, it wasn't evening yet, but he doesn't know, he can't be sure. He's been losing track of time, missing hours in the days that he remembers. He doesn't want to go mad, but he can't remember what it's like to be sane anymore. He's not quite sure what insane is, either. Surely it's different for everyone, but he knows what his is. He makes a childish face at the moonlight, which pays about as much attention as the walls did. He pouts about it and moves away, conceding the space to the implacable moon and its light._

_Something catches his attention, but he doesn't know what that is either. It's a long way away, hours away, but it feels familiar. But when he thinks about what it feels like, that leaves too and he's left with only a void. He hates hating the darkness. He does remember what its like to walk completely unseen, so silent, master of your own sphere of awareness, no matter how big or small that sphere might be._

_He feels there must have been more to it, but he's not sure, and he doesn't want to think about it, so he doesn't._

_In front of the not-familiar familiar feeling, much closer, he sees someone all bound up, and he flinches away as it comes nearer to him. Finally accepting that the man will see him if he comes any closer and will no doubt speak to him, he stands up as tall as he can and pulls his _gi_ close about his chest. He leaves the shelter of the maybe-not-a-boiler, standing against the rail as if he'd been there all along, leaning one hand against it casually, and greets him shortly._

_The man says something meaningless, and he replies, not sounding scared at all. He's pleased at how perfect the reproduction is, even though it's totally fake._

_The man believes him. He makes a few remarks, and this time he figures out that it's about the weather and how fast they're going. This he listens to._

_From the man's words, he picks out 'early hours of the morning', 'Kyoto', and 'trouble'. He can't focus on the other ones, but he thinks he understands. To make sure, he strings together the correct words and manages to sound like himself again._

_The man confirms that he does understand but isn't so fooled this time. He makes a statement of concern, but he's stopped listening. The sheer shock of the man's presence is disconcerting him at a time when he's already very shaken. He should not have gone there, he knew it was stupid, but he'd been drawn there._

_Like a moth to a flame._

_He reproduces his voice to normal again and excuses himself, and the man catches the hint and moves on, back to his duties like a good sailor. He can't blame him for this, and he doesn't. He knows what it's like to follow orders._

_Abandoning his casual mein when he knows that the man whose name he can't remember is out of sight, he pulls away from where the man had been standing, shrinking from the traces he leaves._

_As he stares at the traces in hatred, he notices something else. There is a dark spot on the rail, and it glimmers faintly in the not-even-half light. He makes a sound of anger; it's no doubt blood. He doesn't want anyone else to know he's been here; the man--the one man--was bad enough. One man can do a lot of damage. He knows that. But he doesn't know why._

_He should go back below. He remembers better down there, down _there _near _him_. But he doesn't want to see him until he will never have to anymore. _

_So instead he catches the end of his long sleeve and proceeds to wipe down the mark on the rail. He scrubs at it for several seconds but it only gets worse. He stares at the sleeve as if it was at fault, which it's not, for it's still as white as it was a minute ago...which is to say, not very._

_With a sigh of rotten wood, the rail gives out, and it sags, split into two at the dark spot. A smell of rot and decay flies out of it in a sudden burst, accompanied by moths, and they wheel over the edge and are gone into the sea air._

_He cries out in fear and self-disgust and flees below, making his way toward the engine room._

_And he hopes no one sees him because he never knows if they can anymore._

**

* * *

**

It was full dark when Kenshin awoke, abruptly and completely. Groping around as his eyes adjusted from the dark of the inside of eyelids to the dark of nighttime, he encountered a wall, some sheets hanging down it--oh, right!

Pulling back reflexively in case Kaoru was still there, he dragged himself to his feet. Now able to see in the darkness, he saw that his precautions had not been in vain. Kaoru was sprawled asleep where he had left her, although she seemed far more peaceful than she had been when they'd all been knocked out.

Kenshin still didn't know _why _they had been so affected, but he knew one thing for sure. The whole ship felt bad. They had to get out, they had to get out now.

To that end, he leaned over and touched Kaoru's shoulder, urging her awake. "Kaoru-dono, wake up," he whispered.

"Mmmrrpgh," Kaoru said, rolled over, and buried her face in her pillow.

Kenshin smiled despite his worries, and decided to try a different tactic. "Kaoru-dono, breakfast is ready," he added, leaning close to her ear and trying to sound as if he wasn't afraid of them all risking death very soon.

"Five more minutes..."

"No." He thought for a brief second and decided to add another lie to the list. "This one already gave you five more minutes. Don't you remember?"

"You did?" she said sleepily, sitting up and actually looking at him. "What? 'S still dark!"

"This one lied," he admitted now that his goal had been achieved.

"Why?"

"Something's wrong."

To her credit, she didn't ask "What?" Such a question would only take up time, not to mention she wouldn't get a straight answer. Instead, she asked, "What are we going to do about it?" as she stood up and rubbed sleep out of her eyes.

"We're leaving," Kenshin answered. "This one thinks we are near Osaka Bay already. _Praxidikae _made good time."

She'd learned to trust Kenshin's instincts. He might not always be able to explain how he knew things, but he was usually right. And despite the fact that he'd woken her up in the middle of the night...maybe closer to ungodly hour of predawn...and told her to prepare to leave a ship unannounced, she gathered the things that had been left in the adjacent cabin and stuffed them all into two handy bags, creasing things and sticking them in at odd angles that couldn't be helped, tugging in a spare moment at her kimono, badly mussed from being slept in, to make sure she looked at least halfway decent.

In the other room, she could hear him rousing Sanosuke and Yahiko. Their sleepy protests were cut short by the spooked note in Kenshin's voice, a note that caught their attention quickly and implied that it would be a Very Good Idea to move quickly.

Two more minutes yielded a complete evacuation of the two cabins and a hushed question-and-answer session as they sneaked through the corridors, heading for the top deck.

Questions like: 'Where are we going?'

"Off the boat."

'How?'

This produced: "We can find a lifeboat. Sano and this one will row."

'Aren't we out in the middle of the ocean?'

"This one suspects we are near or in Osaka Bay already."

And inevitably: 'How do you know?'

Kenshin managed not to answer, "This one dreamed it." He still wasn't sure what he'd dreamed, exactly, but he did remember the important things. Key ideas like 'Osaka Bay', the time, and disturbing flashes of something being done to the engine.

_He presses his hands to the metal and _pushes_ it doesn't move why would it move but he feels _something _give deep inside and the longer he stands there touching it the more it gives way_

"This one knows we must be near shore because he cannot hear the engines anymore," he settled for.

As the rest of his group expressed quiet understanding, Sano immediately came up with, "So WHY are we sneaking off the ship in the middle of the night!"

Kenshin sighed and wondered how to explain. It was true, he didn't have any proof, just a deep gut feeling and some very bad dreams. But his instincts were very good--they had to be, he was still alive, wasn't he?--and he tended to follow them. And right now something was screaming at him to get out as far and as fast as he could.

"This one can't explain clearly. If you trust this one, Sano, you must believe that we need to get off the ship soon, and the morning will not be soon enough."

Sano scowled, yawned, and followed as they crouched behind a maybe-a-boiler and engaged in some looking for a lifeboat.

Before they found it, however, Yahiko produced a quiet exclamation and pointed off the port bow. They were indeed pulling into the large harbor at Osaka, and a only a few lights betrayed the location and distance of the shore at this very late (or very early) hour.

Kenshin ignored the strange looks he was getting as he was proved right on at least one count. It must be admitted that the proof that he'd been correct on their location added a little extra weight to his predictions of doom.

Drawing on their memories of Shishio Makoto's battleship _Rengoku_, Kenshin and Sano soon spotted the telltale canopy-covered lump that was indeed a rowboat. Slinking quietly past the lone crewman on guard as he paced back and forth across the deck with no great vigilance, they requested that Kaoru and Yahiko keep watch as they struggled with the ropes, the canopy, and the oars in a concerted but clumsy effort to lower the little wooden boat into the harbor waters.

They created a short relay to drop their baggage into the gently bobbing boat, which took only a minute or so. The last one off, Sano looked back over the deck of the ship, yawned widely, resolved to give Kenshin hell over this if he turned out to be wrong, and followed the kid and the little miss down the rope ladder, where he accepted an oar grudgingly from a _much_ happier-looking Kenshin.

"All right, Kenshin, what's this all about?" Yahiko asked, curled up in the bow.

"This one doesn't know, but nothing has been wrong yet!" Kenshin repeated, still on edge. "It's possible that there's something wrong with the engines."

"Wrong enough to risk our lives?" Yahiko asked.

"Yes," said Kenshin firmly, nodding his head twice to emphasize his point. "Very wrong."

Yahiko yawned cavernously. "Whatever," he muttered, resting his arm on the side and his head on his arm as a makeshift pillow. "Not me that has to explain it if you're wrong, which no offense but I hope you are..."

A faint blit of light flashed over them briefly, lasting only a second and barely drawing the attention of anyone on board. It seemed to be coming from the shore, for it continued over the water for a few seconds before stopping (such as it could on constantly moving waves, light though they were), swaying from side to side as it tracked them back, and came to rest on the back of the boat, where no one paid it any mind.

It vanished as they reached the shore, bumping up against one of the stone piers. It showed signs of recent repair and new stonework, but was still not perfect. The protrusions gave Kenshin a perfect set of handholds as he scaled the short distance in seconds.

He vanished over the top, still crouching, and then stood. Before he could turn around all the way to help his friends up, he got jumped on and squeezed. Forcibly.

"Hiiiiiiii, Himura!" Makimachi Misao's distinctive voice chirped. "I thought it was you!"

"Oro!" Kenshin said (predictably) as he attempted to pry the happy girl off him, binoculars slung round her neck on a leather strap digging into his chest painfully. He gave up quickly and gave her a chaste hug in return, thanking his lucky stars silently that she _wasn't_ wearing that onmitsu outfit of hers, which was a little too short for his liking. She grinned up at him, braid swaying violently, and released him.

He took the opportunity presented by her leaning over the pier to greet the others to take several deep breaths.

"Misao-chan!" Kaoru said in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

"You first! How come you're in a little boat and how come" She made _how come _sound like one word. "you're rowing around in the middle of the night?"

"That's what we want to know." Sano said grouchily. "Why don't you ask Kenshin?"

Misao swung around to do just that, but was brought up short by Kaoru asking her friend for help with the bags. This managed to occupy her for long enough for Kenshin to regain the breath that had been squeezed out of him.

"How did you know we were coming, Misao-dono?" he asked when everyone and the bags had reached the top of the pier.

"Someone on the ship you were coming on wired ahead, and Gramps asked Okon to keep an eye on the reports," she explained. "And so me 'n Gramps and Aoshi-sama came over to Osaka today to wait for you!"

She added in a stage whisper to Kaoru, "Gramps is planning a party."

Kaoru placed her hands over her face and groaned.

"But why are you up in the middle of the night?" Yahiko asked.

It sounded rather like an accusation, and Misao reacted accordingly. "Hey, you are too!" she retorted, pointing fiercely at her.

Kenshin forestalled (briefly) the inevitable 'it was Kenshin's idea' by reaching out and wiping something off Misao's cheek with his thumb. When she looked over at him, surprised by the unexpected touch, he presented her with the results. "You have sugar on your face, Misao-dono."

"Oops!" she said happily, scrubbing at it with a long floppy sleeve. "Gramps bought _yatsuhashi_ for the" she dropped into a fake whisper _"party."_ Returning to her normal voice, she continued, "They're good!"

If they planned to tell her off for sneaking sugar in the middle of the night and playing with binoculars (whose were those anyway?), they never got the chance. Just as Misao was drawing breath to say something that probably contained the name _Aoshi-sama_, she was cut short by a sound of enormous proportions that sounded suspiciously like an engine breach on a large steamboat.

It sounded roughly like this:

**_PHHHOOOOMMMMMMM_**

only a lot louder.

Out in the harbor, _Praxidikae_ was in flames. The raging glow illuminated the shock on all their faces as they stared alternately at the inferno out on the water and Kenshin, who stared in horror at the conflagration.

**

* * *

**

**Author's Note:** Well, it was a while in coming, but at least there was plenty of it. What happened to this chapter? There's just...more! Where's it all coming from? Before you fillet me in search of explanations, let me ask your questions for you: Who or what blew up the ship? Is it the same person who killed the two people? What's with Kenshin and his dreams? What does all this have to do with the Bakumatsu incident? and Where did Misao get the binoculars? Well, maybe that last isn't very important, but I promise I will answer all of them. Even the binoculars. In the words of the window washer, all will be made clear. (laughs) Later. No real allusion for the chapter title. Just ominousness.


	6. Chaos' Avatar

**Chapter Six: Chaos' Avatar**

**Author's Note: **(bangs head on desk and wails) I have clever readers! (thunk) Kudos to everyone who's a step of everyone else. (thunk) You're only one pace behind me, it seems! (thunk) And catching up fast! (thunk) j'vokjfklaioiwkmcxknk Whoops, that was my keyboard, not my desk. Time to stop before I break something. While I'm thinking about it, I would like to formally apologize for any and all spelling mistakes in _Chapter Five: Slipknot_. I had been experiencing computer problems that culminated in an almost complete reset of my hard drive, and coincidentally the deletion of my copy of Microsoft Word. (The problems are solved now. bows to computer-expert friend who will remain nameless for safety reasons) Chapter Five was written almost exclusively on WordPad, which doesn't believe in spell-check. Then, through a miracle and my mom, I got Word! Yah! (does a Word dance and finishes Dr. Pepper can…regards Dr. Pepper can) Wait for it… Why is the Dr. Pepper _always_ gone? Oh yes (grins) that's why. I bet most of you know where _that's_ from!

**Disclaimer: **_If I owned RuroKen…_it would sound a lot more like Star Trek.

**ON WITH THE SHOW!**

_In a mad world only the mad are sane. _--Akira Kurosawa

The shards of what remained of the boat had settled down within seconds, but the flames still cast eerie shadows over the shore, lighting up the faces of the five people gaping in shock with a glow that seemed harsh and hostile. The conflagration blotted out the moon and the stars, making the sky seem like an endless void that stood in strict contrast to the chaos below that raged like a vision of Hell.

Within seconds of the explosion, a bell began to clang stridently, in no particular rhythm at first, as if the ringer was simply making as much noise as possible in as short a time before settling into a distinctive pattern.

"That's the fire brigade alarm," Misao managed to shout over the din. "They'll be here in a minute or so."

Kenshin nodded, hair looking almost dull in comparison to the flames across the water. The waves stirred up by the explosion only a few moments ago finally hit the shore, drenching them all in sea-spray and, in Yahiko's case, seaweed. As he expressed his disgust with a heartfelt 'YUK!' and an enthusiastic hurling of the offensive aquatic plant as far out to sea as possible, shouts from the harbor buildings became audible even through their echoing ears.

"We need to get out of their way," Kenshin said as loudly as possible for someone who seemed compelled to try to whisper right now. He put a hand to his head abruptly, rubbing his eyes, then his ears. Ears ringing with more than just the echoes of _Praxidikae_'s fiery demise, his eyes darted over the water, then he turned to glance over the rooftops, catching himself agilely as he tripped over his own feet.

"Right!" Misao agreed enthusiastically, still staring. "Let's go!"

She tried to trot backwards to lead them away while still taking as good a look at the destruction for as long a time as possible and ended up almost slipping over the side of the pier. With a cry of scorn for her own clumsiness, she gave up and beckoned to her friends. "Me and Gramps and Aoshi-sama"--it was sounding more and more like a refrain every minute--"are staying pretty close! Come on! They'll be up already, what with the explosion..."

A thought struck her, and to her credit she kept walking. "They'll be wondering where I am!" Misao bounced on the balls of her feet with impatience with her tired friends from Tokyo.

"Misao, we just got up," Yahiko groaned. "Cut us a little slack, will you?"

She chewed on her lip briefly and waited for them to catch up. As she stood, the clatter of horses' hooves signaled the arrival of the human port officials and rescue teams. Between the buildings, they saw a heavy vehicle roll to a stop abruptly, and a horde of people piled out, moving with speed and efficiency to get to other boats and head out into the waves in the hopes of salvaging the steamboat and, at the very least, rescuing whatever poor souls had been lucky enough to survive.

No one said anything for the three and a half minutes it took to traverse a maze of narrow streets and reach a travelers' inn, where Misao glanced left, right, and upwards before slipping up to the door and trying to open it.

Like most sane places at 3:24 AM, it was locked.

"Cursewords," muttered Misao. "That figures. Any of you up to climbing walls besides Himura?"

**(Author's Note: **I hate to swear. 'Cursewords' (or 'swearwords') is what _I_ say when I'm mad...it covers everything without being profane. Misao doesn't seem the type to swear to me. I won't write profanities unless they are a.) Unavoidable b.) Understandable/necessary c.) In character d.) Funny as heck e). All of the above.)

"Why not this one?"

"'Cause I _know_ you can."

"Fair enough," Sano muttered. "Let's see...probably. But I don't know about the kid, and the little miss is wearing a kimono."

Yahiko brandished a fist at him. "Bring it on!" he growled.

Kaoru scowled and admitted through body language that Sanosuke, regrettably, had a point.

Misao shook her head. "I'll just go unlock the door from inside," she said firmly. Vaulting onto the lower roof with a single jump, she turned around, gave them a grin easily visible in the firelight from the harbor, and said impishly, "Don't go anywhere, ok?"

She didn't bother to wait for a reply, scaling the wall with relative ease--which is to say, she only slipped once, but caught herself agilely before falling. Within seconds, she had vanished into an open window, facing the harbor, midway up the three-story building, which was evidently hers, from which she had used the binoculars of dubious origin to spot her friends as they fled from the doomed _Praxidikae_.

Nervously, Kenshin glanced around, shooting anxious glances back at the waterfront as if wanting to go back and help out, despite the fact that he'd been hell-bent on getting away not long ago. However, he spent more time watching the open, ebon streets, roofs, and windows around them as if hoping--or fearing--to see someone in the darkness.

**INSERT LINE HERE**

Kenshin knew it was pointless, fruitless; he wouldn't _see_ anything, per se, if there was something to see. He'd have better luck relying on his _ki_-sense; all that was left due to the complete sensory overload due to the conflagration behind him and the authorities' attempts at search, rescue, and firefighting. But he couldn't stop himself from trying, as it was a reflex born of years of combat.

And he had no idea what he'd do if someone or something did come after them. Considering that the awful sensation of disorientation had yet to die down completely. It had yet to reach the horrible levels of last afternoon, when they'd all passed out, but it nagged at him, keeping him from feeling safe enough to relax.

Now he had a sense of what the shogunate warriors more than a decade ago had felt. He _hated_ it. To know that there was someone out there, someone who might appear at any moment, from any direction, with definite hostile intent, was enough to drive any perfectly sane person mad.

However, the dizziness hadn't gotten any worse. He kept that in a relatively safe corner of his mind, hoping that if it did intensify, it would at least give him a few seconds' warning, which was really all he needed. He'd wing it from there.

But in the meantime, the not-knowing was doing its own job of driving him mad.

He knew on an intellectual level that he should at least try to look like he was relaxed, to keep Kaoru and the others from worrying, but a more sensible part of his mind pointed out that given the circumstances, they didn't need to look at him to worry. So he gave up on that and acted just as worried as they were.

It was infuriating not knowing where he was.

Where was he again?

When was he again?

And then, _Oh, shit._

And he was probably just imagining the echo in his head.

Kenshin put a hand on the wall to stabilize himself, drawing in a sharp breath. Catching the attention of his friends in an effort to bring himself back to the moment, he slammed a hand against the stones.

As his hand impacted with them, they rippled like water before the lone breeze on a hot day.

It was not as if the stones had broken, for they had not in the slightest. And not as if they moved to form a gap. No. His hand simply began to slip through the wall as if it was not there. It didn't even feel weird.

It was, however, cold, and his sense of direction was deteriorating by the heartbeat (which was, by the way, something else he was hearing echoes from, and how often does one's heartbeat echo?).

He snatched his hand back with a cry just as the lock clicked open. For a moment, the door didn't move, and then it split open just a hair.

The door paused there for a moment before opening completely. Behind it, lit faintly from behind by several soft lamps, dim in deference to the hour but lit in light of recent events, was a tall familiar person in a long white cloak with a high collar.

Aoshi gave them a brief stare that managed to notice everything from their sleep-rumpled clothes to Kenshin's obvious spooked manner, in passing also observing a missed strand of seaweed in Yahiko's permanently mussed hair. As the former Okashira was never one to use words where words weren't needed, he merely nodded infinitesimally and stepped aside, letting the group of four pile in through the door. Once they'd all clattered through, which took a remarkably short time, he stepped outside for one pace, glanced around for whatever threat had Kenshin so unnerved, and upon seeing nothing--as there was nothing yet to see--returned indoors and closed the door he'd just opened.

"Himura-san!" an elderly but energetic voice greeted them, an edge of worry evident. Okina paused at the foot of the staircase, causing Misao, who'd been right behind him, to trip over him. To her credit, she managed not to end up in a heap, but the impact did force Okina onto the ground floor in order to keep his balance. Such were the hazards of living in the same house as an overactive weasel-girl.

Despite the niggling, as-yet-indefinable sensation in his head that was still screaming at him to get as far away as he could, Kenshin managed to smile.

With the instincts born of years of running the Aoi-ya Inn in Kyoto, Okina's first act was to hustle them upstairs and find them convenient corners to leave their baggage. At Kenshin's earnest request, he held off on asking any questions for a little while.

But once they were through with getting settled in (Misao having moved into Okina's room, as her adoptive grandfather flatly refused to let her invade Aoshi's) it was another story. Cushions were dragged into Misao's vacated (and quickly re-filled) room from all corners of the inn and arranged into a rough circle, with the exception of Sanosuke, who preferred to lounge against the wall.

In the interest of keeping his head on his shoulders, Kenshin forbore to mention how much the street fighter looked like the supposedly-deceased policeman Saito. There was no need for a vituperative rant about how much he disliked the man.

Predictably, the first question out of Okina's mouth was "What's going on?"

Equally predictably, everyone looked at Kenshin, who feigned total ignorance with just his eyes and looked innocently at everyone else. When it became clear that he had no intention of telling the story of their disastrous voyage to Osaka Bay, Kaoru took up the tale.

Eventually, a relatively coherent account emerged, despite Sanosuke and Yahiko chipping in every few seconds, and Kenshin correcting occasional details.

Their story was immediately followed up by "It's awfully lucky that you managed to get off that ship before it blew! A little too lucky..." A look of definite calculation crossed the old spy's face, and he fingered the little bow in his beard speculatively.

Gulp.

"Himura-san?"

"Yeah, Kenshin," Sano drawled. "Come clean. You've been even worse than usual at explaining things lately."

Once again, Kenshin found himself at a loss for sane words. Struggling to find some, he came up with: "This one cannot explain, because he does not know the explanation himself."

Yahiko, for one, wasn't buying it. "Try," he ordered. "How did you know we needed to leave the ship?"

Well, he no longer had to hurry them along, so he may as well hand them his crazy reason. "This one dreamed it."

Aoshi locked eyes with him. "Explain." It was his second comment of the morning, with his first being a curt "Hello, Battousai." Kenshin was really looking forward to Aoshi actually calling him 'Himura' or even in the far distant future, "Kenshin". At the moment, the name, although a ghost he'd supposedly long since come to terms with, only helped to set off the echoes that still wouldn't stop. It didn't help that they were no longer echoes, but snippets of distinctly unrelated things that intruded into his mind's ear.

Now that he thought about them, of course, they got worse.

Eyes going wide in shock as the bellow and crash of a pitched battle intruded into his consciousness, Kenshin drew in a deep breath and slammed his eyelids shut again, fingernails digging into his palms. Only barely registering the exclamations of sudden concern emanating from his friends, he held up one hand to signal them to wait, reddish half-moons of nail impressions fading slowly.

_This one knows you!_

He heard no reply. Was that good? Or was that bad? Either he was talking to himself and he had finally gone completely crazy, or the other just wasn't listening. Or he was, and simply declining to reply.

Trying to figure out where he was, Kenshin reached out his senses, probing beyond the room and out into the streets. He knew that the other couldn't be within the inn itself, or his perceptions would be reeling out of control, a sensation he remembered all too well from that horrible moment of _duality_ aboard the ill-fated _Praxidikae_.

A mistake, a terrible mistake. That extension of his mind only allowed a weak spot for the other to attack, striking at his mind instead of his body; an unfamiliar tactic that left him shoring up defenses already broken.

For a moment he saw through his own eyes.

_Get out!_

Get out!

He was losing ground.

_Damn you! and damn me!_

He had to be stronger than this!

_Get...out!_

Imagining a wall of invulnerable stone, he pulled the image as firmly into his mind's eye as he knew how, putting himself on the inside and the echo on the out.

_I deny you!_

There was no snarl of rage, no hiss of hate. The only indication that he was once again alone in his own mind (had he always been?) was the silence.

And the headache. So caught up had he been in the psychic battle that he had spared no concentration to noticing the thudding pain that beat at his temples and just behind his forehead, which sudden sweat had pasted red bangs to.

"Himura?" Misao ventured carefully as his breathing slowed. "What just happened?"

"I'd like to know that too," Sano said firmly. Kenshin abruptly noticed that his friend's face was only a few inches away from his. Upon seeing the older man's distinctive purple eyes open, Sanosuke backed away and rose from his crouch, warily returning to the wall.

"It's okay," Kenshin said, forcing his voice not to shake. Already the pain was dissipating; he'd had worse from his master Hiko's blows.

"Okay?" Misao protested, approaching but not reaching (yet) full cry. "You almost collapsed!"

"Oh," Kenshin said feebly. "Did it look that bad?"

"Looked bloody awful," Yahiko told him.

Kaoru moved the few inches to kneel in front of him and, taking his chin in one hand, forced him to lock eyes with her. For a moment he entertained the totally childish notion of closing his eyes. "You owe us some explanations, Kenshin," she said, staring him down. "Don't leave us in the dark. When you do that, people get hurt."

He flinched, and she saw it. She was taking a risk, risking tripping the guilt wire and bringing his state of mind crashing down around him. But she had every faith in his strength both mental and physical. She had to know what was going on.

"All right," Kenshin capitulated. "This one will try to make things make sense, but there are no promises made."

"We'll risk it," Okina promised. Aoshi resumed his seat beside the old man.

Kenshin blinked at him. When had he gotten up?

"There was no one nearby," Aoshi informed him. "Are you indisposed?"

"No," the redhead contradicted him. "Not ill, not physically."

He paused, testing the waters of their belief. They stared at him. Surrendering internally (but keeping that barrier very, very strong), he shrugged and said simply, "There is another this one."

Pause...

"What?" Yahiko and Misao said in perfect, unscripted, incredulous unison. They stared at each other. A spoon appeared from nowhere in Misao's hand.

"How is that possible?" Misao said, and handed the spoon to Yahiko.

"You got an evil twin or somethin', Kenshin?" Yahiko suggested skeptically. When Kenshin made no reply, he extended the hand holding the magic spoon into the center of the circle, which now resembled such only by the greatest reach of the imagination.

No one took it for a few seconds, each trying to make sense of Kenshin's insane statement.

Finally Kenshin relieved Yahiko of the ladle. "No, not really."

Misao snatched the spoon from his hand unceremoniously. "Whaddaya mean 'not really'?"

She handed him the spoon so hard she nearly brained him.

"Oro," Kenshin sighed, rubbing his head ruefully. He fiddled with the wooden spoon for a few seconds, rubbing his thumb against the grain of the wood to shine it.

A long hand took it away from him before he wore a hole in it.

"He does," Aoshi informed the not-a-circle-anymore. And, being Aoshi, refused to follow up on that statement and placed the spoon squarely in the center. Heaven only knew how long he'd been calculating that exact point.

"Oh," Kaoru said softly, a faint light of understanding--or at least the beginning of it--reaching her eyes. "But...Kenshin...there's only one you. Only one you here," she tried to clarify, tapping the tatami (picking up the spoon rather belatedly in the process) and then his temple with her other hand.

Kenshin gave her a soulful look, and she could have sworn she saw a hint of fear in the violet depths. She would be willing to bet, too, that she'd be the only one able to see it.

"Apparently not anymore," he said in the same low tone.

Yahiko snatched the spoon. "Explain or I brain you all with the spoon!" he yowled, waving the kitchen utensil around madly. He stopped and looked at it. "Where did this come from?" he asked belatedly.

"Who knows? Who cares? Not important!" Misao snapped, taking it away from him before he made good on his threat. "But you got a good idea!" She brandished the spoon at everyone else. "_Ex_-plain!"

Everyone looked at Kenshin.

"This one doesn't know _how_," the redhead said rather acridly. "He only knows what. And the fact is that this one has been hearing echoes, dreaming echoes, since Tokyo. Even seeing, once. A reflection…changed."

Okina was still frowning at the tatami. "Himura-san," he said (the spoon had vanished when no one was looking), "however different you may act from time to time, you are only one person. You and Battousai are one entity; you cannot be separated into two."

Kenshin looked at the tatami as if the answers Okina had been looking for could be seen there.

"This one cannot explain how. Not yet."

Yahiko's mouth opened wider and wider as he too connected the dots. "Ohmigosh," he said shortly. "The _Ryutsuisen_…"

Kenshin nodded. "Only this one has the skill to pull that off," he said, but there was no trace of the arrogance that would have been dripping off the edges of that statement if said by Hiko Seijurou. Rather, he sounded world-weary, almost sad. "That was the final clue."

"So what are we dealing with?" Misao asked. "A ghost?"

The red-haired swordsman looked very, very tempted to accept that definition. "An echo, maybe," he corrected. "Or—" he looked off into the middle distance and did not complete his sentence.

"Or a very big problem!" Sano finished for him. "Right?"

"Most definitely." Kenshin rubbed a hand over his eyes. "When this one has more figured out, he will tell you."

"Kenshin," Kaoru said curiously, not showing how worried she actually was, "when you collapsed, that was…" She trailed off.

Kenshin spread callused hands helplessly. "We are one and the same," he sighed. "This one gets echoes from…"

"From Battousai," Aoshi filled in.

The tall man received a grateful nod in reply. "…and, probably, him from this one," he completed.

"So the ghost knows about us," Misao said. It was not a question.

Kenshin nodded, hair hiding his eyes. "Two of the same thing cannot occupy the same place at the same time."

Nods all around.

"But his mind is drawn to this one's, because our minds are one and the same. It is…" Kenshin paused, thought, settled for "uncomfortable."

Five faces screamed _'um, duh!"_ Aoshi raised one eyebrow.

"You communicate?" the latter asked. "How?"

"Not words, so much; emotions, sensations, ideas."

"Still, impressive." A tremendous compliment, coming from Aoshi.

"This one is a psychic sensitive," he confessed, feeling uncomfortably like he was under the gaze of millions and standing in the only spot of light. "Limited, but if there is two of this one—"

"Then the power is doubled."

Aoshi was thinking along the same lines, it would seem. Kenshin confirmed with another nod.

"Hey, wait a minute, you're psychic?" Sano objected.

"No, Sano, this one is _sensitive_, mostly to _ki_. It's different."

"Oh. From _Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu?_"

"Training enhanced it." He'd been sensing negative/positive auras, at least, for as long as he could remember. His master had a similar skill, and Kenshin rather suspected that he had been able to sense that they shared that trait. He wondered sometimes if that had been one of the reasons Hiko Seijurou the Tall, Powerful, and All-Around Intimidating had been willing to take in an admittedly scrawny child.

"And you never thought to mention it?"

Aoshi hammered the ex-punk with a trademark _you're-stupid_ look, saving Kenshin from having to answer. "He senses presence, emotion, and intent…and you couldn't guess?"

Sano shot the other man a dirty look and the finger.

Aoshi deemed him beneath his notice (for what might be only the sixth time) and ignored him.

"Himura-san," Okina said seriously, brow furrowed, "you will tell us if you sense this echo nearby." It was most definitely an order.

"It doesn't work that way, Okina-dono," Kenshin said, shaking his head ruefully."But this one will try."

_How is this one to fight himself? There cannot be two…this cannot be._

_This must not be._

_No, it must not._

_You are nothing but a memory. A bad memory, suppressed._

_Dead, but not gone. Not! Not dead, never dead, no!_

Kenshin hissed a curse under his breath and reinforced his walls again.

The rest of the group saw only his eyes; they flashed golden, then purple. Golden again. Purple…purple—the colors stabilized.

"Another attack?" Okina asked.

Kenshin nodded. "We need to stop talking about this for now, perhaps go to bed? If he" _I?_ "starts paying too much attention to the same things this one does, things are going to start becoming very difficult."

"Two identical psyches focused in the same place," Aoshi summarized dispassionately. "Your definition of difficult is interesting, Ba—" Aoshi cut himself off. "Himura."

By general consensus, council was recessed for sleep. Okina, Misao, and Aoshi rose to leave the room as futons were kicked flat. Kaoru grabbed a _yukata_ and banished the boys from the room into the hallway after the Kyoto locals.

"Misao," Aoshi said abruptly, standing on the threshold of his room.

"Yes!" Misao replied, not snapping to attention but definitely moving in that direction.

Aoshi extended a hand, palm up. "My binoculars?"

**INSERT LINE HERE**

(**Author's Note:** Check out _Rurouni Kenshin: Overture to Destruction_—that's Book Eleven—for the first and only appearance of the magic spoon! It probably belonged to Hiko, and Yahiko and Misao just picked the spoon up, but it's too good to be wasted! The magic spoon is awesome: everyone needs a magic spoon.)

**INSERT LINE HERE**

The newcomers to the inn dribbled downstairs around noon for belated breakfast-to-go, arriving one by one and staying only long enough to get a tray of food from the lunch-preparing kitchen staff before retreating back upstairs to eat. All seemed shell-shocked and very sleepy.

Kenshin brandished a pair of chopsticks at Okina over a plate. "No, not a good idea."

Okina folded his arms. "Why not?"

"Simple. Kyoto was our territory; he and this one know it like the backs of our hands—or did, once. Upon reaching Kyoto for the first time, months ago, even memories with no substance became much stronger, even overwhelming." Kenshin seemed to be the only one able to handle talking in plurals in addition to third person; it was giving anyone else who happened to be listening a headache.

"And?" Sano loomed over Kenshin's head, having found a fishbone who-knows-where and promptly stuck it in his mouth.

"Good morning, Sano," Kenshin replied calmly.

"'s noon," the younger man grumbled, sprawling on the floor next to his shorter friend.

"Yes, it is."

"So why shouldn't we go to Kyoto, Himura-san?" Okina persisted.

"Because this one's past-ghost" What? "will be most familiar with Kyoto. This one does not want to confront a foe that is at ease."

"Oh, I get it." Sano said. "You think he'll be more…real…the closer we get to Kyoto?" With the morning light waxing toward noon, the concept of a phantom double of Kenshin seemed much more remote and a lot less scary. Though it still seemed odd to talk about, the discussion seemed more theoretical, like a strange story.

"Yes, exactly. In Tokyo, he was merely nightmares and visions. As we got nearer to the center of the Revolution, he gained more and more coherence, enough to kill. Being solidly grounded in the familiar is a powerful advantage."

Okina tugged on his beard. "Himura…what are you planning?" he asked cunningly.

Kenshin sighed and deliberately continued his brunch, declining to answer on the account of his mouth being full. He watched the old spy covertly out of the corner of his eye, hoping that the man would drop that line of questioning. He didn't want to think about it.

His two companions waited not-so-patiently.

Seizing on the approaching presence of Misao as his way out, Kenshin hurriedly took another bite and waited for her to enter.

"Hey, guess what?" Misao demanded excitedly, an oddly offended expression on her face.

"What, weasel-girl?"

Misao's slightly offended expression quickly switched to one of rage. "Don't-call-me-weasel-girl!" she demanded at speed. "Someone showed up about the explosion."

"Here?" Okina asked.

"Uh huh. Guess who?"

Kenshin placed his chopsticks down and thought about it. Thank whatever force ruled the universe for timely interruptions that saved him from answering questions.

"Well?"

"Wait a moment, Misao-dono." He concentrated, raised his eyebrows. "This one should have known," he muttered, rising. "It's Chou."

"Right!" Misao chirped, impressed. "I guess you were telling the truth after all."

"This one always tells the truth, Misao-dono," Kenshin muttered, slightly offended. It seemed he'd said this before. "Otherwise no one will believe this one's words."

"Broom-head?" Sano groaned. "Just great."

Still, he accompanied Kenshin down the stairs into the entryway, where, indeed, one of Kyoto's weirder policemen awaited them.

Chou's face fell at the sight of Sanosuke. "I was kinda hoping you'd gotten blown up too, bird-head," he drawled.

"No such luck, broom!" Sano bellowed.

"Bird!"

"Broom!"

"Gentlemen!" Kenshin snapped, hiding a grin. "That's enough."

"Maaaan, what is it with you guys and blowing things up?" Chou complained at Kenshin. "_Rengoku_, Shishio's lair, _Praxidikae_…"

"We didn't blow up the last two," Kenshin corrected him.

Chou waved a pencil at him in a vaguely threatening gesture. "Whatever."

"What are you doing here, anyway, broom-head?"

The former _Juppongatana_ member scowled. "Collecting information," he drawled. "On the explosion of _Praxidikae_. You were on the passenger list."

"So we were."

"You think we were at fault?" Sano demanded, clenching his fists and showing no sign of how much the action hurt his right one.

Chou grinned.

"Well we didn't!" he yelped. "And if you say otherwise…"

"Relax, bird-head. The surviving crew swears it was engine trouble, that they started getting some problems a few hours before it all went sky-high."

"Oh." Sano looked faintly sheepish.

"Anyway, I can't see why you'd want to bother." Chou rested his cheek on his hand, skewing his face something awful. "So no one's gonna come beat down your doors any time soon."

"Good," the street fighter said smugly.

What Chou had deliberately failed to mention was that the affirmation of the Tokyo residents' innocence came from higher up. A certain 'Lieutenant Goro Fujita', who had happened to be passing through, had snatched the passenger list from his subordinate, taken one look at the contents, relieved Chou of his favorite pen, and scratched out most of the names, including theirs. He'd then thrown the pen and list back at Chou and ordered him to 'get on with it' before sweeping out in a cloud of omnipresent cigarette smoke.

"Do you know how many survived?" Kenshin asked.

"Uh…" Chou said eloquently. "Yeah!" He fiddled with a pad of paper that had, up till now, resided in one of the larger pockets of his flame-patterned jacket, which he wore despite his new-found occupation. After a few seconds of flipping paper and grumbling, he came up with a list. "The engine room was completely destroyed, but most of the on deck crew and all but two of the passengers were found OK."

"Who?"

"Look, I don't have names. You'd have to go to the port officials for that. But I'll tell you one thing," he added in a conspiratorial voice. "I heard it was sabotage. That's what I'm trying to find out."

"Any suspects?" Sano demanded to know.

"If I did, would I be wasting my time here? No. But if you do hear anything, lemme know, got it?" Chou ordered perfunctorily. "Though how you hear anything with that big mouth open all the time is beyond me, rooster-head."

This provided the perfect opportunity for Sanosuke to explode at the policeman and Chou to agilely duck his automatic swipe at his head. However he failed to duck quite far enough and Sano's hand punched through his vertically inclined hair. Grinning at the chagrinned expression on Sanosuke's face, Chou ducked out the door, leaving Sano staring at his hand as if contaminated.

"Excuse me a moment," Sano said dazedly. "I'm going to go wash this now."

**INSERT LINE HERE**

Dismissing the idea of a ghost, Misao and Okina had dragged their friends into an enthusiastic discussion of agendas and tourist spots that consumed the afternoon. (Aoshi had vanished quite early on, and was nowhere to be found.) Taking their cues from Kenshin, who was making a distinct effort to 'act casual', the other three Tokyo natives put their nocturnal problem out of their minds and tried to persuade Okina that lunch could not be eaten on the go, along with other banalities.

An excessive amount of paper had appeared out of nowhere in the fashion of the magic spoon (like Aoshi, now gone without a trace) and required their immediate attention. Heaven only knew how Misao and Okina had packed all the brochures and guidebooks into their economical luggage, but there the information was, heaped in a big pile against the door.

"Oops," Misao said with a grin, dumping yet another satchel's contents onto the rapidly growing heap that prevented the door from opening. "Clumsy me."

So they were compelled to sort through it all if they ever hoped to leave for dinner.

Some time after the door had been successfully liberated and dinner had been served to all concerned by a young woman who left giggling at the sight of her customers swamped by an immense amount of paper, Sanosuke snuck out as best he could and committed himself to wandering around the inn.

Through a curious set of coincidences, he ended up wandering around on a third-floor balcony. Soon bored of the five-pace-wide platform, Sano decided against going down and pulled himself onto the roof, balancing precipitously for a few seconds before stabilizing. He grinned, chuckling triumphantly, and leaned over to half-walk, half-crawl up to the apex of the roof.

He lounged on the bar that reached the length of the roof, regarding the fading sunset with a curious feeling. Sanosuke had never been very sentimental. The idea of looking at a sunset, or a sunrise, or a waterfall simply for the sake of looking at something beautiful was one alien to him. And his friend Kenshin's fascination with the night sky simply baffled him.

Yet despite all this, he found himself gazing at the rapidly dimming light with some sense of…how to describe it? He felt curiously empty, as if he was holding his breath. He wasn't—a few quick inhalations confirmed it—but that was the closest analogy.

His scrutiny of the now-dark horizon revealed one interesting thing: There were clouds, highlighted by the faint scraps of light that remained tenuously and to a much lesser degree by the lanterns from the port city below.

So?

There were _clouds_! Big, dark, heavy clouds that promised rain unequivocally. Clouds such as he hadn't seen since the last big storm, long before the summer had started.

Sano cheered quietly, waving his left fist (the intact one) in the general direction of said clouds happily.

"It's going to rain soon," came a quiet voice from about seven feet to the left. Sanosuke was not entirely surprised to see that Kenshin had joined him on the rooftops. Nor was he surprised that he hadn't noticed him arrive. The redhead could be very quiet when he set his mind to it, and beside, the wind, faint but enough to conceal light footsteps, was blowing toward Kenshin.

"Nah, y' think?" was Sano's jovial reply.

Even in the nearly-darkness, Sano could see the faint smile that crossed his small friend's face. "Of all people, this one thought you to be the last one to come and look at the stars, Sano."

Not a question. Sanosuke shrugged. "You spooked?"

A pause, then: "Oro?"

"Knowing there's another you out there." Sano paused. "That sounds so weird."

"What would you feel if there was a second Sanosuke?"

His friend thought about it for a second. "I'd probably want to punch his lights out."

Kenshin sighed, but Sano thought it was an amused sigh.

"Yeah, but Kenshin, really. I mean, you've been trying to hide from your past for years, and now it's come back to haunt you in the worst way."

The redhead didn't reply.

"What can you do against yourself?"

Kenshin brushed his left hand across his face and into his hair, sweeping it back. "Whatever possible."

"This isn't going to be easy."

"Nothing ever is."

Sanosuke looked over at him, roof now faintly lit by the firelight from a torch lit not far below. Kenshin regarded the horizon with more interest than it entirely mandated.

Maybe it was the strange note in the redhead's voice; maybe it was that Kenshin was refusing to look him in the eye. Maybe it was that Sanosuke was more perceptive than he gave himself credit for.

Or maybe it was that the wind shifted, and the distinctive smell of blood made itself known.

Now extremely worried, he pulled himself to his feet and walked across the tiles to get a little closer, stretching out his hand to get his companion's attention.

"Are you all right, Kenshin?"

That's when he saw the source of the smell; the blood steadily collecting around the other man's left hand, which was firmly planted on the bar. It dripped over the crest of the roof slowly.

His sudden seizure of horror caught the redhead's attention, and he too leapt to his feet, snatching for Sanosuke's bare hand.

Sano pulled it away, leaving the redhead at the end of his lunge. With perfect balance, he swung around, not missing his footing in the slightest.

It was not the torchlight. Nothing naturally combines with purple, lavender, violet, or whatever other purple-like color anyone could describe Kenshin's eyes as—not combine and make molten gold.

Any doubts Sanosuke still had about Kenshin's wild hypothesis dissolved. There were two physical versions of the redhead.

And he'd been talking to the wrong one.

The ghost leapt at him again, hands outstretched, and Sano, having seen many a time what even a sane Kenshin could do with a sword in his hands, made haste to hinder that eventuality. He snatched for the conveniently extended hands and missed both. That simple mistake probably saved his life.

He did, however, catch the swordsman's left sleeve, pulling his _gi_ askew.

This simple action stopped the breath in Sanosuke's throat.

The simple blue shirt had hidden a fatal wound; a bloody, ragged hole punched through the redhead's chest, directly into his heart. It bled sullenly even as he watched, ichor dripping from the wound as well as the start of a cut that reached down his arm before vanishing beneath fabric, which had doubtless supplied the blood that had alerted Sanosuke to the mistaken identity. In the darkness, he hadn't seen the stain.

Only then did it occur to him to shout.

"KENSHIN! KENSHIN!"

Flinching away from the ear-shattering yell, the little red-haired ghost tried to pull away. Sanosuke, hearing the fabric start to rip, seized his captive's upper arm through the fabric. For some reason he was extremely phobic about touching him.

"Let me go!" the ghost of the _hitokiri_ hissed, dropping the modern Kenshin's speech patterns.

"No way in hell," Sano snapped back. "I've seen what the _real_ Kenshin can do with a sword; you think I'm gonna let you get your hands on one?" He nodded bluntly at the sword belted at his waist.

The statement enraged the red-haired swordsman. "_I am the real Kenshin!_ Don't make me kill you. Let go. Now."

That last demand was supplemented with a mental attack that tried to force Sanosuke into releasing his grip.

"Fat chance," Sano snarled.

Battousai hissed in rage and whipped his other hand around as if to slap the man restraining him. If he had connected, the chances of Sanosuke's survival would have been very slim.

As it was, the ex-punk's shout finally paid off. Abruptly, the ghost sucked in a breath, airing through his teeth. His fingers spasmed and he pulled away. Not that Sanosuke felt like letting go.

On the other end of the roof, an identical gasp heralded the living Kenshin's arrival.

For the first time, they locked physical eyes.

For both of them, it was as if a hammer had rendezvoused with their heads at high velocity. So close together in space, they were unnaturally synched.

_For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction…_

"Sanosuke, let go."

"Sanosuke, let go."

It took Sano a moment to realize that they'd both spoken, and another to realize that things were beginning to be weird. Weirder.

He released the very substantial ghost's arm and backed away as far as he could without falling off the roof. He wouldn't desert Kenshin. But what use could he be?

This was Kenshin's battle alone. Or should that be Kenshins' battle alone?

It is a rule of physics that two identical things cannot exist in the same place and time. It is one of the fundamental laws of the universe; one of the regulations that keeps the fabric of the universe in one piece.

The two redheads, one dead, one alive, were not exactly identical, and they were separated by several feet of rooftop. But it was enough to wreak havoc.

**INSERT LINE HERE**

Kenshin stared into the eyes of one of his worst nightmares.

His dreams of the past few nights suddenly made a lot more sense.

"Not dreams," he said aloud. "Memories."

His mirror image nodded.

They were staring each other down through the air between them, and that unnaturally doubled psychic attention, coupled with the disruptively impossible duality of things, was causing some troublesome side effects.

The most visible, at first, was the rippling in the air. The gap between them bubbled, waved, convulsed, yet the distance between the two did not change. As if viewed through a sequence of fun-house mirrors, distortions began to affect the near radius.

Simple changes, at first. The wood of which the balcony rail was made changed types. Sanosuke's red headband acquired a rip. Then others; fire broke out around them, sounds that never were echoed off the rooftops.

When one rule goes out the window, others change to accommodate it. Reality was changing around them, trying futilely to adapt to the echo from the past. Unaffected by Time and cut loose from Destiny, he nevertheless affected them, and badly.

"Stop it…" Kenshin whispered.

"Stop…" the other echoed.

In its continuing struggle for continuity, the powers that be lent a hand to breaking the deadlock, driving the living Kenshin forward. He knew it was insane, that attacking his duplicate was totally useless, but he couldn't stop himself from lunging, not even drawing his sword.

Some instinct led him to reach out and seize the other by the wrist. Even more surprising is that Battousai snatched his other arm at the same time.

They stood there for a moment before Kenshin released a cry of pain. Where Battousai touched him, he could feel energy draining from him into the body of the other. In a flash of intuition, he realized that Battousai had no life force of his own—or not enough. In a feat of desperation, he was acquiring strength from any place possible.

"You killed Sessui, didn't you," Kenshin whispered to his double. "To stay alive."

Battousai's golden eyes widened. "The coward! He ran! Ran and left me to die!"

"What?"

So focused were they on each other that neither noticed the arrival of Kaoru, Yahiko, Misao, and Aoshi on the balcony that Sano had retreated to. The new arrivals got only two heartbeats to absorb the situation before the universe gave up and took the easy way out.

The duplicates vanished.

**INSERT LINE HERE**

(Well, in my defense, I had to cut it off somewhere.)

**Author's Note:** I'm such a slacker. However, once again, it's pretty long! I didn't even mean to get into the issue of Kenshin being a psychic sensitive, but I was talking about it with my little brother, and, well, it fit. I have a habit of classifying things (I alphabetized all our movies and my bookshelves are a monarchy—_no one _is allowed to mess with _my_ _system_!) and Kenshin's 'talent' drives me nuts. Now I have a label for it. If it offends you, notice the 'Supernatural' genre classification up top. Not to be put off, I see…I could say I had a summer job, and it would be true, but I got a little distracted, too... (sighs) It does not help that my life has been invaded by (unfortunately, likeable) people with unusual powers. Just my luck to get obsessed with something else in the middle of an already difficult fanfiction...oh well, the only cure for an obsession is to spread it around, right? (Kokoro, consider your proper introduction to them, _via_ me, payback for YYH almost two years ago.) Yep...I thought _Yu Yu Hakusho_ was bad for this fic's schedule, but _X-Men _is so much worse! I was planning on being done a month ago. (_School looms on the horizon making nasty faces._ Be patient and considerate.) Oh, and to **hasso**: Enough yellow eyes for you? If not, stick around...

**Thought for the Day/Night:** Useful information is a gift. A good story is a treasure. Trivia is the nickel you find by the side of the road. Half of the fun is finding it; the other half is owning it. Being able to use it is just a bonus.


	7. A Soul So Divided

**Chapter Seven: A Soul So Divided**

**Disclaimer: **_If I owned RuroKen…_RuroKen would belong to me. (…pause…elevator music plays…) Um…you know, I think I'm stuck here. (scratches head) Now how did this happen?

**Author's Note:** Some of this chapter was written to the accompaniment of 'Losing Your Mind Again', a RuroKen AMV available on the-oro dot com, in addition to the justly famous 'Kyoto Kombat'. The first happened to synchronize quite oddly with my story; the second is simply awesome. They rubbed off. I have no (reasonable) excuse for why this is so late, but if you really, really want the full script…you really don't want it. When I don't know things, I usually just make them up. This would not be a problem if people could tell the difference…

**ON WITH THE SHOW!**

_Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved. --_William Jennings Bryan

**

* * *

**

_It was everywhere and nowhere, spanning every time but outside of it, like a blanket cast over the history of the world. A blanket that enveloped the world quite inextricably, for the meddling and actions of the sentient race that had arisen upon the world had quite a tendency to tangle it. Here, a pond of goo beat all the odds, quite by accident, to combine into the first proteins. There, a man sought to save his beloved out of time but chose to let her die to save the fabric as he knew it. _

_Somewhere else, a chance encounter between two beasts wiped out the last of a potential second race. Further on, or further back, an explosion rent the fabric asunder, by chance untangling a knot that had been caused before, or afterward. It all depended on which way you were facing and it didn't have a face, nor a mind, as such._

_But it saw, or knew about, or felt, another presence. Somehow somewhen something had gotten tangled and it was affecting the weave. Affecting it quite actively, in fact._

_Seeking to tame it, in truth._

_The threads looked at the little creature, and were scornful, in a vast, unintelligible, dispassionate way. This was not to be._

_So the weave found a way to make it right. And the one who sought to tame it thought he had, but this was a thought of the threads' doing._

_And he could not tell the difference anymore. _

**

* * *

**

Oh, gods, where was he now?

Kenshin looked around frantically, one of the primary rules of combat, learned years ago, driving him. _Keep your eye on the enemy. _He knew his double had to be somewhere, but right now, there was no one. He was the only person anywhere.

No other heartbeat, or breath; no figure in sight. No _ki_.

And where was he again?

Although the edges of his vision blurred and darkened, he could see in front of him. And from all appearances, it appeared to be the Kamiya dojo.

Never mind that a second (minute? year?) ago, he'd been locked in the grip of his psychotic, _dead_ double on the roof of an Osaka inn.

Well. His clone had to be somewhere. And he wasn't going to run around looking for him.

_And neither will I panic!_

He could hear the sound of footsteps suddenly, all around him. Tilting his head to triangulate better, he tracked them behind himself, to his left, away to the right corner in front of him, then pausing.

The door slid open.

No one there.

Kenshin narrowed his eyes. He still couldn't sense anything there.

"This one won't play by your rules," he said to seemingly empty air.

_Why do you talk that way?_

The voice came from behind him.

Disconcerted by the voice so like his (for due to a purely biological phenomenon, one's voice sounds different through one's own ears) Kenshin spun lightly on the ball of his right foot, drawing his sakabato in one swift gesture.

_Thunk!_ And there was another crack in the dojo wall, mirror image to the one put there before Saito had come for the second time to herald the beginning of the chaos in Kyoto.

As if thought became reality, the wolf himself was there. There had been no footsteps. The door, still open, had not even moved. But he was there, indubitably, standing with his left hand, his sword hand, on the hilt of one of his swords.

One of his swords?

And Saito was in blue. Not the blue of a policeman's jacket, but the blue and white mountain motif of the Shinsengumi. The hairs on the back of Kenshin's neck rose at the very sight of it. To him, that blue and white pattern meant only death.

This was not the Saito of the present, not the Saito who'd first nearly killed him then fought beside him at Shishio's lair before vanishing into the explosion set off by Shishio's right-hand man Hoji. Not the cynical, scathing lieutenant with a cigarette perpetually in his mouth or hand and a sadistic enjoyment of driving Sanosuke up the wall.

Kenshin barely had time to draw his sword before he struck, the force of the blow, intercepted at the last second, driving the smaller man backwards. He stumbled through the freezing snow, toes numbed by the sub-zero temperatures, and almost lost his footing on the ice for a heart-stopping moment.

All but blind, deafened, and numb, he could only swipe aimlessly and clumsily around him with his blade, razor-edge hissing, as he struggled to orient himself, to defend himself from the death he knew was approaching.

A fist, heavily muscled, sent him flying. Out of control and blind as a bat, he had no way of telling even which way was 'up' until he discovered 'down' with extreme force. Clinging with the last of his strength to the hilt of his sword, he couldn't avoid gasping in pain.

Drawing on even the energy that kept his heart beating, he staggered to his feet and leapt at the man trying to kill him, blacking out at the last second. Darkness swamped his vision, and he felt the katana shear through flesh and bone, sending reverberations through his arms and hands. It seemed like every bone in his finger was vibrating, and he clenched his hands around the hilt with renewed strength to stop the shaking.

He landed perfectly, a trick drilled into him with the memory of not only pain on missing a landing, but the consequences of imperfection while under his master's eye. Spinning on one foot, he automatically snapped back to a ready position, body reacting even as his instincts, instincts that dated from before the dawn of the human race, assured him that there would be no return strike. His mind, still a few steps behind the rest of him, was blank, but somewhere deep inside him, a scream was building, still too small to hear.

How long before it burst out? Before he went mad?

In the back of his mind, a silent, wordless suggestion, more powerful than a voice, layered with persuasive force: _You're already there._

Blood dripping from his sword, Kenshin froze, memories overriding the impressions flooding into every sense.

With a cry of rage at the intrusion into his mind, he lashed out, physically and mentally, seeking the mirror image always only a heartbeat away.

Around him, the world—the trees, bloodstained dirt, fresh corpse, and sky alike—fractured around him, rippling and tearing apart.

_This is NOT!_

On some level, he felt his fists strike flesh—at the same moment, the vision he was being forced to live shattered once and for all.

His first impression was of fingernails across the skin of his temples, his second of his hand meeting cloth and muscled flesh beneath. Forcing his eyes open as his clenched hands finished their swing, he was met first by the sight of infinity.

Kenshin reeled. No one could hope to look into the depths of the past, future, and present and hope to remain sane…

**

* * *

**

Bloody fingers splayed across his opponent's temples, linking them psychically, his own face swam beneath his blurred gaze, too-familiar (but so different) eyes staring blindly into his as he forced his doppelganger's mind further back, the lack of clear vision frustrating him. The ripples of time distortion, reflecting outward from his position in this place that was no place and every place, too often rebounded into the gap between the threads created by his presence.

The whispers wouldn't stop! They bypassed his ears and hissed hatred and revilement, it seemed, into his very brain.

_Abomination!_

_Be gone!_

_Atrocity!_

_You will be destroyed!_

_This cannot be!_

Too late, voices… no, no, no, they were wrong, didn't they see? Could whispers see? Could voices realize? Materialize? Did they have eyes?

On the edge of his vision, which, light as well as time skewed by the effects, was quite different from the edge of normal vision, ghosts hovered, insubstantial but not inaudible, shades hissing hatred and fear attending the master of Death.

_That is all I can ever be. As I am its master, so it will obey!_

He had defeated death. He wielded death without its touch upon him.

Here in the void, even destiny feared him. Here in the void, he had control, control he would use for one purpose only: _survival_.

He knew the laws; hell, he had faced them down and spat in their faces. But in one respect he was willing to obey. The entire universe rejected duality as it rejected the void. So he would have to find a place in time where he was not, and fill the void. Mad with the shock of death and, having been consumed and spat out by the threads of time and destiny, mad too with knowledge man was never meant to possess and could not contain, he had fled, blindly, madly, wildly, to somewhere where the laws could not deny him his right; that of life.

In his madness, had he made a mistake? Or was there truly no place for him anymore? Racked by fear, he had reasoned, with the little left to him, that if he was truly outcast, he would create his own place.

A place that was already occupied.

And as he broke the laws further, he broke the barrier, sheer willpower combined with desperation and the fear of one beyond the fears of life and death phasing him into reality. And time and space had bent—barely. Enough to give him a semblance of life while retaining his hold on death.

How had there been a place, however small, for him, he wondered in one of his few moments of clarity. If there truly was a niche that he could fill in this time and place, why was his future self, a future that would never now be, still existent? Nature abhors a vacuum, and he had been pulled to this temporal location, to manifest only as a ghost. A dream, a memory…_nothing but a shade_.

To be forgotten is the final death.

**

* * *

**

He caught the surge of fury, breaking through his mental death grip, too late, and, still reeling in the milliseconds of disorientation from having a mental bond broken, a truly painful rebound, also missed seeing the fist driven into his diaphragm, driving what felt like every particle of air from his lungs…which was odd, because he didn't really need to breathe, being dead.

_no! not for long!_

Stumbling backwards, feet instinctively finding the narrow threads, spun of the very substance they protected him from, that were all that lay between him and Chaos, he struggled to remember exactly where he was and what he was doing. The overwhelming presence of the fabric of destiny itself beat at him, rejecting his presence and so eroding his mind and his memories. He was outside their influence; his thread had been severed, yet he stood still—so the semi-sentient pattern sought to destroy him another way.

Oh, yes. He was killing himself.

Why?

Because he had to.

In logic worthy of Euclidian geometry, he had to kill him because killing him was what he had to do.

A self that was at a disadvantage, that could not fully open his eyes nor look around him, had no auditory input, for echoes were useless in the boundless plane of the threads, and was, most of all, facing someone he'd tried his best to reject for—he couldn't remember how many years it had been.

Kenshin was afraid, but he had mastered it, locked the terror and horror away deep within. This had served him well, almost too well, during the time when they'd actually been one person, during the Bakumatsu. On the inside, he was screaming. He could never forget, of course. That would be a dishonor to the men he'd killed. He had to remember what he'd been, what he'd done, so he could—not undo the damage—but atone for it. If he forgot, he would never be able to pay back the debt, of blood, of death, of life. But there were days—there were years—when he wanted to. He'd never been able to, but _gods_, how he wanted to. And now he was being forced to face his fears in the most drastic of ways.

Battousai knew it like the back of his hand. Now, to find the key, for surely, if they were to expand the metaphor, his future self had changed the locks.

"Where are we?" The words inched out through gritted teeth.

Battousai did not smile and there was no implication of such emotion in his voice. "Death. Destiny. The universe."

"Tell me how this happened." They were words of compulsion and a direct order.

Deliberately making the blade hiss, the dead swordsman drew his blade, honed to the finest of edges.

"You must die so that I may live," he replied, voice emotionless, although he could feel the universe screaming at him to do something about this impossibility. "I refuse to die."

"Tell me how this happened," Kenshin repeated. "Tell me how…" He stuttered over the words for a few moments, as if speaking the phrase would make it more real. "…you died," he finished finally. "It would seem that we are the same person, separated by ten years, but this one has no memory of dying, and facing a future self with the intent to kill him. This one thinks he would remember that quite well."

Battousai unconsciously began to listen, for in the ten years that divided their two identical souls, Kenshin had learned to persuade people using more than just mental suggestion (although that was a substantial part of it) and he was using that natural persuasion now. After all, he reasoned, he knew he was stronger than he had been ten years ago, so if it came down to a fight, which he hoped it would not, he had substantial chances of winning. Luckily for him, he noticed, at some point the _wakizashi_, which was the partner to the very deadly katana in the possession of his doppelganger, had been lost.

But then again, how did you beat a ghost? Wouldn't he just get up again? This presented a problem.

"Explain," Kenshin commanded, still trying to hold off the pending attack at least long enough to get his bearings, a difficult task in this everywhere-and-everywhen-world. "We are one as two. Perhaps we can come to a solution that does not involve the death of one of us."

For a moment, he thought he'd actually gotten somewhere. His double thought for a moment, staring at him deliberately. Although Kenshin was truly rattled—it was like looking in a mirror that contained your reflection, only your reflection wasn't you—Battousai seemed quite comfortable with the idea of a duplicate.

Molten gold eyes locked onto rich purple ones, and eyes that could, independently, stare down a cat (but not an angry young lady in any time or place) locked themselves into a staring contest for emotional dominance. The irresistible force was meeting the immovable object, and it was not only a toss-up who would win, it was anyone's guess which was which…

It was a good idea. But it wasn't going to work. Because, as Kaoru had so aptly noted a night ago, Kenshin often listened very carefully, agreed, and then ignored the suggestion/order completely.

"Your death," Battousai said coldly, dashing his hopes. "You are right. We are two where there should be one. There should be only one," he repeated, obsessively. And for the first time Kenshin realized that his double was truly mad, and not completely in control. Who, or what, else was pulling the strings, he didn't like to think.

**

* * *

**

First strike—who moves first? Since they were the same person, did it really matter?

Lunge and cut, strike empty air, ready, track, disrupt, follow up.

Useless reflection, so much more.

Steel rang, but did not echo; for what could it echo from?

Blood dripped, falling endlessly into the web of chaos, intricate beyond sight and imagination. Whose blood?

First blood—last blood counts for more.

"Back down!" Battousai snarled, golden eyes reflecting the chaos both without and within.

"This one can't do that, and you know it."

_Why do you _talk_ that way?_

Kenshin did, in fact, know it was slightly annoying. He had been told this before.

Battousai froze solid, staring his double in the eye. "I know why. You're hiding. You're afraid of me." He backed this up with a forceful suggestion that even if this was not true, it would be, should be.

Breaking eye contact, Kenshin shook off the compulsion. _No. You are nothing but a memory, nothing but a dream_

"Liar!"

_of a past gone, a past ended_

"Shut up!"

The undead red-head was losing his cool, rejecting the truth forced upon him.

_long ago, never to be revived again. Gone but not forgotten; no space or crack in the fabric of the world…_

All of Battousai's rage and fury, incited by Kenshin's fundamental rejection of the self that was not himself, fear, of death and oblivion, and desperation, desire for that most basic of all things called life, and all the mis-channeled power of the puppets' strings, blasted out at Kenshin. He stumbled backwards, losing his footing, for history is treacherous, and betrays the ones who shape it most.

More than a whisper, less than a word; the strings that still, despite what he'd believed, bound him drove Battousai forward, reaching for Kenshin to drain the last of life from him.

In a last-ditch attempt at redeeming all this, Kenshin dropped his sakabato.

He must have blinked, because one moment he'd been trying to touch his double in an attempt to gain the life-force he so desperately needed, and the next, his sword hand was numb from the elbow down, his paralyzed wrist was locked in a death grip, and the aforementioned sword was clattering to a ground that technically wasn't _really_ there.

"How'd you do that?" As usual when he was at a disadvantage, whether at swords, at speech, or in some kind of social context, Battousai froze solid, suppressing all emotions. There was a reason Kenshin sympathized with Aoshi—they'd both been imperturbable ice cubes at some point.

"Pressure point." So if they were both acting as if they were at a disadvantage, who was winning?

"Fascinating. Let me go."

"No. If this one goes, you go too."

"That's really annoying."

Kenshin nodded. "Yes, I know. I'll make you a deal."

Battousai's expression, while still doing a decent impression of an icicle, managed to look uninterested and intrigued at the same time.

"I'll keep talking like this if you listen to me."

What did have to lose? "Fine. Now let go of me."

"I said no."

They stared at each other. It would have been quite a sight, were anyone there to see.

"You can't do this," Kenshin tried to make himself understand. "If you kill me, you destroy yourself. If you try to murder half of yourself, you'll go mad. I still don't understand where we are, or when we are, and I think that's a good thing. You tried to understand, didn't you? To find a way to defeat death itself."

Kenshin was on the right track, and he still couldn't feel his hand, so Battousai kept quiet.

"Something went wrong. We made a mistake, didn't we? Something went wrong…" he repeated thoughtfully.

"Something went very wrong," Battousai agreed dispassionately.

"This place," Kenshin continued, thinking very, very fast, because the paralysis on his reflection's hand wasn't going to last much longer, "it's everywhere, right? Answer me."

"Yes."

"And every time, also, right?"

"Yes…"

"Let's go fix it."

"What?" The ice cube was melting. Impossible statements can do that to even the best ice cubes.

"Fix it! Change what went wrong!" Kenshin insisted. Damn, this might actually work, assuming it wasn't total nonsense! "Go back and make a difference. One change!"

Hang on a second, he thought, wasn't messing with the timeline going to destroy his time?

"No," Battousai said. Kenshin hadn't spoken aloud, but as they thought more alike, they were finding it easier and easier to pick up on stray thoughts, especially such prominent ones. "If we change my past, it becomes _your_ future…yes?"

"Yes," Kenshin said, fingers loosening on Battousai's wrist. "It should work."

"It would work," Battousai said, pulling his hand away and stepping backwards. "It would."

Kenshin was nothing if not observant. "But what?" he said worriedly, trying to catch his double's eye. This was only going to work if they both agreed.

Battousai picked up his blade.

**

* * *

**

_In The Immortal Words of Takani Megumi:_ I'm so bad.

**Author's Note:** This was the chapter that would not be written! I had three pages of cut excerpts, most of which, I must admit, got recycled back into this chapter at one point or another. It's frustrating! I spent a month and a half trying to get the first half of this written, and then I sit down and churn out the rest of it in one night! (head explodes) Sorry. There was another scene involving the rest of the cast set in Osaka that could have been tacked on at the end of this chapter, but I decided just to go with what I'd got. It'll turn up next chapter. I give you my solemn promise—so that's a definite maybe. And yes, I admit it; the preface and body of the chapter contain just enough Star Trek references to keep me happy. I don't expect anyone to recognize them, except me.

**P.S.** If anyone wants to _draw_ some part of this scene, please, go ahead, just tell me when you've done it. I want to see it, and I can't draw worth beans. I know there are some really, really good artists out there.


	8. The Destroyer of Worlds

**Chapter Eight: …The Destroyer of Worlds**

**Disclaimer:** _If I owned RuroKen…_my mom would kill me very dead, unless I made lots of money off it.

**Author's Note:** Let's talk about quotes, because quotes are fun. First off, (consults list) lots of points to anyone who can tell me, without the aid of Google or Wikipedia, where the quote _'I am become death, the destroyer of worlds' _is from. As for the quote for this chapter…this is the passage that really launched this…and may give you a sense of the original book. (Much Madder than this, I promise.) All quotes are real except for the little couplet in Chapter One, which I made up. Back then I wasn't planning on regular quotes, so I didn't do any research. For the verse at the end of this chapter, that song has been stuck in my head for, oh, seven years? And I didn't even think of it for months after I started this. And then it was perfect—I felt so stupid. I think that covers everything, except for the other notes at the end…

**ON WITH THE SHOW!**

_Trelane exploded in infinite directions and in that moment he existed throughout time and space and it was all revealed to him in a second and he tried to understand it all which was a major and fatal mistake, for when he collapsed back down, his mind didn't quite make the jump… Around the machine, time bent and warped…_

_Trelane was blown out of his machine into the arms of his parents…He did not hear his parents shouting at him because he was too busy listening to the whole of creation shouting at him, telling him what needed to be done and who he should do it to. Finally he looked up at his parents._

_He was quite mad._

_Not "quite mad" as in extremely angry. No, "quite mad" as in…_

"_Quite Mad."_

_As a hatter. As a loon. As every psychotic killer or irrational creature throughout the entire history of everything, all wrapped up and combined into one package and tied off with a bow._

_Well…not quite exactly._

_Actually, he was Much Madder than that._

_From Peter David's _Q-Squared

**

* * *

**

Not five seconds ago, Kenshin had looked up from a quiet cup of after-dinner tea with Misao, Kaoru, Yahiko, and Aoshi, placed the cup he was holding on the tatami with extreme care, then flitted out of sight at speed with sword in hand. At least, they assumed he must have his sword with him because first of all, it rarely left his side, and last of all, it had vanished at the same time Kenshin did.

The door bounced back from the end of its slide, and was promptly thrown open again by everyone else as they barreled into the hallway, stopping short when there was no one with red hair in sight.

"That way," Aoshi said after a brief moment, nodding to the left and leading the way.

A few paces in that direction down the hall, a maid with a basket of laundry paused, looking at them with extreme puzzlement over the stack of freshly cleaned linens.

"Did someone just come by?" she asked, confusedly. "Only it's a little hard to see right now…"

"Yes, don't worry about it!" Misao called over her shoulder as they passed her and headed for the outside balcony where Kenshin had dashed off to not two seconds ago. "He must be moving really fast!"

He was. Spooked by the note of desperation in Sanosuke's voice and sensing too late the extra presence, which, in all fairness, had gone out of his way to remain unobtrusive, Kenshin had triangulated on the anomaly and, in what may seem in retrospect a foolish decision, charged straight to the heart of it.

His friends had no chance of catching up with him, and the best they could do was follow until they reached the balcony that Sano had recently visited.

They had only a moment to absorb the scene. Comprehension or disbelief, in some cases both, would follow later.

The first person they saw was Sanosuke, who was standing on the very lip of the roof staring upwards in horror. Before they could follow his gaze, a sudden blast of some unknown power tried to force them away, back into the inn. Misdirected by the anomaly that had been abruptly aggravated by the battle taking place on the roof, it pushed them not inside but in all directions. Shoved against the railings and the wall, they looked towards the source instinctively.

They were barely visible. With the universe convulsing around them, even light was being affected, warping and sometimes obscuring the image of the two redheads, locked in each other's grip.

Nausea worse than anything any of them had ever suffered dug its talons into their bodies without warning. With a barely audible thud, Sanosuke collapsed, which is a dangerous thing to do on the edge of a roof. In keeping with the impossible situation, he did not fall to the ground but rather hovered a foot from the balcony floor before the rebelling laws of gravity tossed him into the air to introduce him to the wall at speed.

All this between two heartbeats. The next second they were both gone, and for a little while, the universe returned to normal.

Except, of course, that Kenshin was gone.

Hands buried in her hair to keep her skull in one piece, which was feeling increasingly like a futile gesture, Misao was the first to rise, swaying unsteadily on what felt like more legs than before, although that was only because she was stumbling so often to keep from falling over again.

It took only a few seconds to absorb three facts: First, her head was splitting. Second, Kenshin was gone. Third, this was bad.

"Ok, nobody panic," she said quickly before she had even properly thought about the words.

"Nobody panic?" Kaoru inquired icily from the floor. A distinct quaver had made its way into her voice by the second syllable. "Misao-chan," Kaoru was mad, but making an effort to be polite, "please tell me that you did not just tell me not to panic, because if you did, I'm going to be angry."

"Sorry," Misao tried to grin sheepishly. _Scary!_

Kaoru joined the younger girl in standing vertically, watching as the male three-fifths of the group followed her lead. Sano was rubbing the side of his head where he'd been tossed into the wall.

Looking sideways at Kaoru, Misao was getting very worried. _How can she look so calm? Kenshin's just_ vanished, _and she's standing there like she's in total control!_

"All right," Kaoru said, quite steadily. "As I understand it, Kenshin is dealing with his counterpart somewhere else. Where, gentlemen and Misao, is he most likely to reappear?"

Yahiko was looking at his teacher with his jaw hanging somewhere around his knees. At her question, he abruptly shut it before she caught him gaping.

"Kyoto," Aoshi said in his usual monosyllabic fashion. "Much of his past is there."

Kaoru's hands turned into white fists, the only outward sign of the emotions that had to be raging behind her blue eyes. "All right. I told him I'd follow him to Kyoto again if I had to, and so I will. Let's go."

She turned to the door in a swirling of amber-flower patterned kimono and swept off the balcony like a queen. Behind her, Aoshi headed down to the streets to commandeer two coaches. Yahiko and Sano went to pack up their luggage for the second time in two days. Misao followed Kaoru.

"Kaoru-chan," she ventured after a few seconds, seeing that Kaoru was not going to hide behind a door and burst into fits of unstoppable tears, "are you all right?"

Much to her surprise, Kaoru smiled. "Surprised I'm not in hysterics by now?"

Misao scuffed her feet on the floor as they walked, fiddling with the end of her braid. "Kinda. Actually, I'm really surprised."

Kaoru stopped, turned, and gripped Misao by both shoulders. "I was very stupid last time something like this happened. I have to trust him. He said he'd always come back. I have to believe he will fulfill that promise. If I forget that, I lose everything.

"Make no mistake, I am so worried about Kenshin, I don't have the proper words. So these will have to do, Misao-chan. _I trust Kenshin._ I can't help him right now. I don't know how to follow him, but if I thought it would help, I'd learn. I'll follow him into Hell if I have to, to stand with him and haul him out if need be. I believe he knows what he's doing right now. And I have to be prepared to help him if necessary when he comes back."

Kaoru's hands lowered at about the same moment Okina found them, waving frantically for their attention. He'd met Yahiko and Sano during their mad dash for their rooms and learned a rather scattered but sufficient version of the situation from them.

"Kaoru-san, Misao-chan, let's go!"

"Coming, gramps!" Misao yelped, turning to follow, and it was Kaoru's turn to fall into step behind her.

"Look at it this way," Kaoru concluded. "All the energy I'm not using on panicking now, I can use to wallop him when he gets back. It evens out."

**

* * *

**

"_You can't hurt me. You can't kill me. You can't. Don't you understand? You're part of me."_ —'good' Captain Kirk to 'evil' Captain Kirk, _Star Trek: 'The Enemy Within'_

* * *

He was losing track of where and when he was, of course, for there was no organized when or where to keep track of. Stumbling blindly, following the uncertain lead of a man who'd taken a serious shot at killing him seconds or minutes or days ago, he had no way of knowing where they'd end up, or if he'd even survive the journey.

_Of all the paths to walk,_ he thought wryly, _this one is one of the strangest._

_Stop that; you're making it hard to concentrate, _he was told bluntly.

_Stop what?_

_Doubting me! Traveling in a directed way like this is difficult enough without having to drag you along too. _Battousai was evidently nervous about returning to the scene of one of his most spectacular failures—after all, getting yourself killed is pretty spectacular—and he was taking it out on the only person to hand.

_I said we'd give this a try and you of all people should know—I always keep my promises._

"Fair enough," Kenshin replied apologetically, not bothering to look around for his reflection.

He could see nothing but formless clouds, although they were given some shape by the currents flowing through them. They seemed to be trying to follow the path of one of them, although it merged with others often. Trying not to make the mistake of watching the ebb and flow too closely and being enthralled by them, he allowed his eyes to relax, and as the muscles in his eyes loosened, his vision became less focused.

Kenshin had once been given a puzzle, not one that needed to be put together by hand but one that needed to be looked at. Presented with the strangely compelling if totally incomprehensible design and told that it held a great secret by his master, he had sat staring at it for hours, squinting at it stubbornly in the hope of figuring out what secret the puzzle held. He had been so focused, he had not even bothered to notice Hiko laughing at the sight of the scrawny little redhead nearly burning holes in it with the force of his gaze, nor had he wanted to leave it for such a trivial thing as dinner.

Long after Hiko had expressed his grudging respect for the little one's determination (alas, even this mocking praise went unheard) his eyes had tired to the point that he could no longer see straight. Seeing double, he had rubbed his eyes and renewed his vigil, and as his eyes refocused, they hit a point at which the 'secret' had jumped out at him.

"Master, master, I see it!" he'd yelped in delight, jumping to his feet and promptly falling over, legs stiff and locked in place from not having moved in hours. But even that combined with Hiko laughing at him for the thousandth time that week (and it was only two days in) was nothing compared to the shape that had suddenly, miraculously, appeared on the page as if it had always been there, for it always had.

Looking into the mists of time had a similar quality. When you looked at it the right way, everything made sense.

"I see…" Kenshin murmured. "I see how it can work now…Here! Stop!"

If his double resented having his authority as the only person who knew what he was doing counteracted, he didn't show it. Instead, they both stopped and focused their gazes, without even needing to confer, on the same spot.

The point in the mist had no particular features to recommend it. In all respects it bore no differences from the rest of the fog; it was shot through with strands of softly glowing lights like the rest of the surroundings and seemed to be moving while staying in one place. The universe moves to its own rules and does not expect us to know them.

"No," Battousai contradicted, and leveled his forefinger at a point slightly further ahead of them. "Here. I remember."

A flash of perception overwhelmed Kenshin's mind for a brief second

_darkness shot through with_ ki _shot through with cold bright steel sharp and numb but it hurts and smells of metal and rain and death that smells like sounds like feels like death and explodes red and crimson looks black by the light not quite bright enough obscured by clouds but reflects off the blade anyway like fire all unseen burns and fly can't lose never ever_

but vanished as quickly as it came.

Battousai flipped his hand over, palm up. Blood from the wound on his arm had long since dried on it, leaving a dark red, almost brown, line across his hand. Pulling in a quick breath of mist-infested air, he blew out steadily.

The fog cleared slightly, enough to show the scene beyond.

* * *

The world smelled of old ash and blood despite the facts that the torch Katsura's aide Sessui carried was newly lit and no one was bleeding. The nights in Kyoto during the latter days of the Bakumatsu Revolution always smelled of ash and blood to Kenshin, called Battousai, primary swordsman of the Ishinshishi alliance.

Despite the fact that it was dark, reducing the easily-visible world to the circle of the torchlight and sullen glows from the fewest windows yet, Kenshin was keeping watch on the entire area to a radius that most people would find impossible. Still, he was unusually distracted tonight. He still saw no purpose in his presence. Katsura hadn't been anywhere vitally important, as in life-or-death, the-sky-or-the-Shinsengumi-are-going-to-fall-on-our-heads important. Yet Katsura had insisted. Kenshin was beginning to suspect that the man was just giving him something to do.

Kenshin's shoulder blades itched, as if someone were watching him. Yet a quick glance around told him that neither the second swordsman, nor Katsura had their eyes on him. He was thankful. Lately, he felt that he was happiest being left completely alone, even though when he was alone for any extended length of time, cooped up in whatever room he happened to be inhabiting, he tended to fall into a black depression that, too often, ended up projected quite a distance into wherever headquarters happened to be, which infected everyone else with a snappish temper and dark thoughts. Few people tried to talk to him anymore. Fewer repeated the effort.

He really didn't like invisible people staring at him. Sullenly angry, he growled underneath his breath and placed one hand on his sword.

Evidently his snarl hadn't been voiced quietly enough. Their attention caught, his companions turned to look at him as they walked, and now he really was being observed.

Luckily, he was standing far enough out of the torchlight to allow anyone else to see the dull flush that crept up his cheeks, not dark enough to obscure the distinctive cross-shaped scar. It remains to be decided whether it was a lucky turn of events that some instinct led him to find a convenient excuse.

All too close, thoughts bubbled frantically; thoughts he didn't recognize and didn't like the sound of. Also, they were making an effort to be quiet, not just in the audible decibel ranges but on a psychic level as well. Someone on the other side had guessed about his abilities, it seemed. It was surprising that he could hear them even now, come to think of it in the split second before attack. He didn't want to think about the chances of him noticing them by accident.

The patrol emerged from cover, boiling out fully armed from the alley corner they'd been lurking in, concealed by one of the omnipresent decorative bushes that filled the city due to the whim of some ruler in the far distant past. It was a good trick, one that Kenshin had used many times in the past. The branches gave you concealment that you could see through at the same time. It cast a shadow. If you really cared to, you could run through it. The waving of the branches covered any noise you might make. Even the blossoms, for many of these plants were blooming at any given time in the year, served to mask your scent.

Unfortunately for the Shinsengumi patrol, the fact that it was a good trick that Kenshin was familiar with meant that he was one step ahead of them. The downside of it was that if you really wanted to burst through a bush, you were going to get leaves and branches in the way and possibly a twig in your eye. It makes a lot of noise and slows you down. Also, the fact that your enemy knows what you are doing is a good cue to do something else.

All this means, in short, that Kenshin came down on them like a ton of bricks. Quite literally, for an attack from above with a very sharp sword can be quite devastating if the man with the sword knows what he is doing.

Two men fell in the first five seconds. By the time the second had hit the suddenly wet cobblestones, Kenshin had also landed, gestured with a sharp twitch of his left hand to the rear (meaning that the way back was clear to run like hell into), and swiveled to lock blades with another soldier in blue and white.

Steel rang, the shock rippling down his katana to jar his right hand, the one he was holding it in. Extending his left out from his body to aid with his balance, he tracked the man behind him with little effort and spun, ducking under the soldier's blade to run him through. The man, his breath suddenly coming in bubbling fits and starts, dropped his sword with a convulsive jerk as he tried to pull away from almost two feet of razor-sharp metal buried in his gut. By the time it had clattered to the cobblestones, forcing the man that had taken the seeming opportunity of Kenshin's distraction to attack to adjust his step for one fatal moment in order to step over it, the redhead was already away, vanishing from beneath the mortally stricken soldier as he collapsed only to reappear behind his fellow, decapitating him in one swift stroke.

Four men dead in the first ten seconds, but Kenshin, still frozen to ice in the midst of the bloodshed, was focused less on them than the surroundings. One of their men had broken away at the first glint, reflected from little light off his scything blade, of long red hair, and was blowing his heart into a piercing whistle, which was bound to bring every Shinsengumi troop in their direction on the double.

Grimacing at the shrill sound, which was lancing painfully into his skull through his sensitive ears, Kenshin seemed to blink across the street to send the man's body flying into a wall. The whistle-blower's head followed promptly after.

He'd counted eight in that first moment of shock, and the last three had been given by luck of the draw a few seconds to organize a plan, and they had begun to put it into effect, boxing him in. With the sense of Katsura retreating further and further into the distance without any noticeable aggravation, Kenshin was looking more and more for ways out of this, and if he had to go through the remaining three men, so be it.

Focused on making sure his commander was safely away, Kenshin almost missed the flicker of _ki _that signaled attack, and he was forced into a frantic flurry of meaningless blows in order to fend off the three-way attack. As he considered the local rooftop layout, a blade scythed over his head, forcing him to duck and informing him that the Shinsengumi were more than aware of his ability to use the rooftops as easily as any highway.

Very close now, more people, geared up for battle; they read red-hot and black with anger, underlined by dark grey fear shot through with dirtied purple lightning bolts. Not in the center of them but rather leading the pack was one of the two signatures Kenshin really did not want after him at this exact moment, but the man could move almost as fast as the Battousai himself when he was hunting, as he was now.

Strapped for time, Kenshin unleashed a wild attack, seemingly randomized but in fact following a proscribed course that, in all fairness, did vary from time to time. Although it succeeded in driving the surviving Shinsengumi trio back, he only managed to clear an avenue for Saito to leap at him through his men, hell-bent on pinning little Kenshin to a wall.

The wolf missed, barely. The stone wall behind him seemed to explode with the force of Saito's trademark Gatotsu, showering them all with shards of rubble. Kenshin ducked underneath it, less of a controlled fall than a sudden collapse, and shot out his foot, making an effort to kick the captain's feet out from under him. This also failed, and Saito scythed his blade downwards, forcing Kenshin to roll away.

Partially severed by the thrusting attack and now rolled on the floor, the cloth tie that held Kenshin's long mane in its unmercifully high ponytail snapped once and for all, falling unmarked beneath the feet of the reinforced squad. Indeed, Kenshin himself only noticed it was gone when a lock of his hair flapped into his eyes. Badge of pride or not, long hair was nothing but a pain in battle.

As he regained his feet and stood at the ready, another _ki_-signature intensified to the point where Kenshin need not even look to know that Okita Soshi had joined his fellow captain in the street. In the darkness, Kenshin could not see the faint speck of blood that still dyed Okita's lips, but he could hear the interrupted cadence of his breathing well enough to know that the captain of the First Squad had run all the way here, and his illness was increasing.

The common soldiers backed out of the way hurriedly, akin to some silent audience at a grisly play. The entire Ishinshishi alliance was their enemy, but for the captains and Battousai, this was fairly personal, and they were not to intervene. It was common knowledge that Saito, especially, would love to personally mount Battousai's head on a pole and march through the city with it. He would enjoy every step of the way.

Ever cheerful despite his affliction, Okita at least pretended to be polite. "Good evening, Himura-san," he greeted his enemy. "Are you prepared to surrender yet?" Although he was alone and ringed by almost twenty soldiers, none thought it very likely.

"No chance," Kenshin responded steadily.

"Ah well," Okita said with a shrug, one that quickly settled into an attack posture.

Kenshin didn't wait. Although attacking two Shinsengumi captains on your own is not the brightest of ideas, all he really wanted was enough space to run and the chance to get into the air. It was a chance they weren't going to give him.

The flurry of deadly attacks from two sides at once was forcing Kenshin to desperation. Becoming more and more stressed from the intensity and fervor of his opponents, his frantic glancing around for an exit route betrayed him, and as the battle raged on, he made a heartbeat's error.

With the wall at his back, he dodged Saito's Gatotsu only to intercept Okita's sword, which cut sideways at a speed beyond what many people could see. Only the fact that he pulled back at the same time as he moved sideways saved him from being decapitated. As it was, a red-hot line of agony suddenly blazed into life across his forehead, and hot blood filled his vision. Jerking backward in an automatic reaction, the back of his head struck the wall, creating a ringing in his ears that blocked all hope of being able to hear where either of his two opponents, who badly wanted him dead, were.

* * *

Kenshin's hand cut through the mist to grip his counterpart by the shoulder, and surprised golden eyes locked with purple ones for the last time.

"It's worth it," Kenshin said spontaneously. "Remember that."

For a heartbeat, Battousai mirrored his gesture. All but identical, it was like reaching through a mirror, and having the mirror reach back out.

Battousai vanished into the flow of time.

* * *

He had not a moment to consider, so he acted on instinct, taking a wild chance but _knowing_ beyond all doubt where Saito's blade would be. Thoughts burning like fire, he blocked and dodged simultaneously, his blade intercepting the thrust that would have skewered him just enough to reroute the deadly blow over his shoulder as he leapt to the side. With Okita's blade still at the far point of its arc, he rolled under the young captain's extended arm, blinking thick ichor from his eyes desperately. He dared not trust his newfound luck to wipe his face clean. His sleeves, after all, weren't that hygienic after having been through a street fight.

Just like that, there was free air at his back, and he launched himself upward before the dust from yet another shattered section of wall had settled enough to permit even partial visibility.

The red-haired demon that stalked Kyoto, the seemingly immortal ghost, was gone, vanished into the rain that was now pelting down and the labyrinth of streets, in hot pursuit of his fellow rebels, leaving the First and Third Captains of the Shinsengumi to think of new and improved nasty things to do to the Battousai (when they eventually caught him) as they sat together at Headquarters when they should have been figuring out ways to explain the latest slaughter to their superiors.

Not a being, now an echo, a special type of madness possessed Kenshin, a fury that would run amok if left without control. But control it he would, for over ten years, until finding the mastery that would allow him to put his demonic temper to sleep once and for all.

* * *

Alone in the mists, things made more sense to Kenshin now.

_Not really my temper,_ he thought, watching a now-empty Kyoto of the past, _but it is me…oh, forget it._

It took him a moment to realize that he was now without a guide.

The concept chilled his blood. To be lost forever, now that he finally had a home and a family (cobbled together as it was), was not a fate he cared to contemplate.

Closing his eyes and attempting to regain his composure, Kenshin pulled the tendrils of his _ki_ in around him like a cloak, centering himself. When his eyes reopened, he was perfectly stable and calm, as he had been when under fire in the middle of a battle. He had lost his enhanced outward senses, and a subtle fizz of power was bubbling just beneath his skin, but he was far more aware of his own thoughts and feelings as opposed to the shadows of others' that he often received, and anyway, there was no one else physically here to sense.

There was patently no use in wandering at random through Time/Space/Destiny, for he had no reference points at all. He knew only one location, and that was where he was; near Kyoto, second year of Genji. Again closing his eyes, he visualized how he and his counterpart, now returned to a place he had now never left, had approached his current position.

He was still facing the same way. He'd pointed to one point, which had been slightly too late, but in the right place. Battousai had contradicted him, moving slightly forward.

So if forward in space was backward in time, he needed to turn around and follow the thread that glowed familiarly. Now that he thought about it, he realized that the shades of all the threads were slightly different, and with his aura compressed closely into his body, he recognized the subtle difference between one and the myriad others entwined with it.

That was, assuming logic followed the same laws here as in his more mundane world.

An insanely risky gambit? Absolutely. But what other choice did he have? He wasn't going to stay here for the rest of his life. He had no guarantee that Fate would decide it did like him after all and return him automatically to his proper place and time. And if he was lost forever in the weave, at least he would know that he was _trying_ his best to return to his family and friends.

Besides, if he annoyed Fate enough with random ramblings, it might kick him out simply to get rid of him. And if he was right, dropping him in the center of a star or a million years in the past would simply tangle the web, certainly something Destiny must have had enough of by now.

His hand did not touch the thread, it seemed merely to go through it; either it was or he was discorporate. He hoped it was the thread, even though the thread was him…

With no other choice, Kenshin placed his trust in the unreal hands of Fate, and set off into the intense mist, following his own lifeline.

Possibly he turned, from right to left, but never back. Such a thing (normally) didn't happen. Maybe it was the universe moving, flowing around him as he stood still, and he was merely walking in place over a floor that slipped out on its own from beneath his feet.

The swordsman walked for an indefinite length of time. He had no method of keeping time here, and even counting heartbeats, breaths, or steps meant nothing. But as he traveled, keeping the golden-red thread in the center of his palm, and reluctantly watching it even though it sent a chill down his spine to see it slide smoothly and painlessly through his flesh, he realized that he was receiving the strongest emotions of the years.

Regret featured heavily, a weight always on his shoulders, and Kenshin's pace slowed, footfalls echoing hollowly on nothing. He dared not look down lest he see Chaos…or Nihility. Anger, at himself or others, burned sullenly through the thread at times. Grief, at the loss of friends briefly made and quickly left, as he fled friendship as much as hatred, as well as jealousy when he saw people living in peace and innocence. He did not hate them for having good things, nor would he willingly inflict himself and all the dangers that dogged him on others for any substantial length of time, but still…still. Some part of him missed those things.

And finally, in the wake of the onslaught of passively negative emotions, a surprising sense of acceptance, of wonder (he'd idly imagined such a thing, but never really believed it would come to pass), of simple happiness. Brief lances of pain jumped from the molten gold thread to his arm, followed up by anger, and a twice-familiar signature, but only briefly, as control of the madness reasserted itself, and the berserk, wild side of his twofold nature was subdued again.

Judging precise distance in time was impossible for him, so he had to, in the end, make a guess. Copying his doppelganger's gesture, he gently blew the fog away from where it all but obscured the actual body of the thread.

Kenshin had come close. He had come very, very close; it was an excellent guess. Though trusting to luck is risky at best, suicidal at worst, occasionally the universe pulls through. As from a distance, he watched as _Rengoku_ blew up, and recognized now the work of Battousai's deadly touch. He saw now what he had not seen then; bodies both living and dead recovered from the blazing wreckage, including among the casualties Ruthyas, irritable husband to the depressed Meirai, and the brash and noble Captain Orestes, who had gone down with his ship like a true captain. He made a mental note to tell Sano that his friend Lukas had not only survived but had acquitted himself with honor.

Events rushed past him at blazing speed. Kenshin-of-the-past and his little group entered the inn, led by Misao; things settled down for the night; the sun rose, hovered, fell. In a barely distinguishable blur, Sano wandered onto the roof—a flash of red was Battousai: when it suddenly doubled, then vanished, Kenshin froze his hand. There and then.

About to imitate Battousai and leap back into the normal flow of time, Kenshin paused. An overwhelming temptation to move a little further forward to get some preview, at least emotionally, as to what his future held, gripped him with cunning fingers. Barely a whisper in his mind, but immeasurably alluring, he was for a moment caught between desire to go home and the fascination of at least feeling the future.

It was an agonizing moment that could have been any length in the variable time scale of the tapestry of the universe. For an immeasurable instant, Kenshin wanted nothing more than to keep going and learn what Fate held for him. The temptation clung to his heart tightly, and for that moment, afflicted with turmoil, he forgot to breathe.

One of the hardest decisions of his life was turning away from that glimpse of the future, right up there with striking the first fatal blow that marked him irrevocably, marrying Tomoe, and setting off to Kyoto again possibly to break his vow never again to kill. It was that last decision that convinced him. It had hurt more than he would ever let on to leave Kaoru weeping hopelessly in the street that night.

_Kaoru-dono will cry again._

He couldn't have that. He was determined to never be the cause of her tears again. And the future would come soon enough regardless.

The tendrils of vapor that had begun to obscure the passage home were once again blown away, and Kenshin left the web of lifelines and heartstrings behind forever.

* * *

Fortune and History are treacherous. Tyche and Clio think themselves funny. If there is a traditional god or goddess of complications, he or she knows better than to show their face or let their name be known, because most of the world wishes to have words with them, and none of those words will be 'blessings'.

* * *

It was disorienting to be thrust so abruptly back into the material world, and Kenshin staggered, unable to see straight and mind assaulted with silence when he'd opened it expecting people.

His second clue, following the lack of general population, that he was not where he wanted to be was most likely the log he tripped over as he attempted to regain his equilibrium, cutting short _that_ quest in a most undignified manner.

Great. So now he was not only lost, but covered in mud. Things had not substantially improved. At least Destiny had been clean.

Flicking grime from his fingers like an aggrieved cat, Kenshin reflexively drew his sword and ran his fingers carefully down the blade, removing any moisture or dirt from it. Whisking the filth from the mouth of the wooden sheath, he replaced the backwards blade, and only then did he clean his face off in the same manner, scraping mud from the tips of his ponytail irritably. Never had Kenshin looked more feline.

Somewhat cleaner than he had been, Kenshin looked upward, through tree branches gently swaying with the wind that runs before a storm, carrying the sound of thunder and the scent of rain, both of which were in evidence. The moon glowed behind a cloud, casting a splotch of radiance from the far side that barely penetrated.

It smelled like the same evening, if it was the same rainstorm that had been pending when he'd been so abruptly yanked out of the universe.

Now that he had a tentative when, he set about determining the where. That he was in a forest was self-evident, and he already knew that there were few to no people about. Although…he focused for a few seconds. In the distance, something that felt like a very large group of people blazed, vibrated, or whispered in his mind's eye. There is not a proper word for the sensation. It felt like either a large, cheerful army, or a city.

Moving towards them now that his equilibrium had reasserted itself seemed like the best idea, and with due regard for the presence of more irksomely placed logs, he began to wend his way through the woods, which didn't happen to be an easy task in a strange forest in the dark.

Ten minutes and a handsome collection of scratches from a malicious thorn bush later, he managed to find a small stream, where he washed the last of the mud from his skin and the edges of his _gi_. Whatever color it had been this morning (he didn't keep track—it was only a shirt, after all), it was no longer that shade, and was simply the nameless color of mud.

A moment later he paused, hands frozen in the act of twisting water from his sleeves.

Kenshin had a very good memory. The only things he forgot either didn't matter, or were convenient to forget. And he recognized this stream. He'd been here before, and recently. And if Hiko Seijurou picked up on his presence here, for his master was a much better telempath than his errant student was, he was going to have to answer a lot of questions, tell another improbable story, and be called an idiot (and possibly accused of making things up) in the bargain.

The Fates think they're funny.

Well, at least now he knew where he was, where he wasn't, and how to get back to where he needed to be. First stop: Aoi-ya Inn, Kyoto.

* * *

With their rented carriages summarily paid and dismissed in the neighborhood of Aoi-ya, the Kyoto natives and their Tokyo guests piled out in a heap onto the pavement and rushed for the door. If they were going to send out search parties, best to start from home base.

Omasu greeted them at the door, a smile on her face. "Welcome back, guys!" she said cheerfully.

She saw immediately that something was wrong. Despite the façade, she was still _kunonichi_, after all. "What's happened? Didn't you bring Kenshin-san?" The absence of the redhead was impossible to miss.

"Long and complicated story, Omasu, dear," Okina said curtly. "We think he's somewhere in Kyoto, though."

"You've _lost_ Kenshin-san? How careless of you all."

"Omasu, not _now_!" Okina groaned.

She rolled her eyes. "Fine, tell me later, grump. Everyone inside so I can lock up before it starts to rain," she ordered peremptorily.

As the lock clicked behind them, they kicked their sandals off at the threshold and headed for the garden in the back, with Misao, Okina, and Aoshi discussing various clever onmitsu ways of finding people and Omasu tagging along in hopes of hearing the full, interesting story.

"He shouldn't be hard to miss, after all," Misao assured them all.

"Yeah, but Himura-san's impossible to find when he doesn't want to be," Okina growled.

"Why would he not want to be found?" Misao demanded in outrage as they entered the garden.

Aoshi stopped cold. Holding up a finger for silence, he looked around, silently. Finally, he spoke to the empty garden.

"Did you come here on purpose, or was the decision taken out of your hands?"

The garden replied in Kenshin's voice. "Absolutely not my idea, although it admittedly saved travel time."

Omasu collapsed into uncontrollable laughter as Kenshin faded into visibility from the shadows cast by the stones and trees. From inside, behind the thin walls, hilarity in three other distinct voices was in evidence.

"OMASU, OKON, KURO, SHIRO, YOU KNEW ALL ALONG!" Misao howled at the top of her lungs. Somewhere across the city, glass shattered.

Kenshin held up his hands in surrender. "Kaoru-dono, not this one's fault," he pleaded as she advanced on him furiously. If he had any further excuses, they were squelched when she whacked him full-force, then squeezed him into a bear hug with equal vigor. The inevitable 'oro!' was almost completely breathless.

When she finally released him, it was only to the not-so-tender ministrations of Sano and Yahiko, who cheerfully mauled him to their satisfaction and gave him back to her.

"All right, Kenshin, how'd you do it?" Yahiko demanded, shaking his head in disbelief.

"It doesn't make much sense, actually," Kenshin excused the forthcoming gibberish. "This one will have to think about it—someday when he really needs a convenient headache. Let's just say that what happened in the present _had_ to happen in order to ensure that the past turned out the way it was supposed to."

"What?" said everyone.

"Don't try to make sense of it," Kenshin reassured them. "It works regardless."

Aoshi's non-expression said very clearly that he was going to pry a full explanation out of Kenshin sometime in the future over however many cups of tea it took for Kenshin to run out of words even if he had to nail the redhead to the floor.

"But everything's back to normal again?" Kaoru asked with a hopeful smile, her hand firmly imprisoning Kenshin's.

"We can go back to Plan A of 'do many fun things'?" Misao confirmed.

"We might actually get a full night's sleep?" Sano wanted to know.

"Yes, I think so," Kenshin answered them all. "Everything's the way it should be now."

And ever so softly, it began to rain.

* * *

_Oh, where's the thread that binds me_

_The voice that calls me back?_

_Where's the love that finds me--_

_And what's the root I lack?_

_My heart seeks the hearth,_

_My feet seek the road._

_A soul so divided_

_Is a terrible load._

_--_Bruce Coville; _Song of the Wanderer_

* * *

**Le'letha on Allusions:** You've most likely noticed that I love to quote things, especially traditional myths and ancient beliefs. I feel compelled to mention that I do not believe in plural gods and goddesses (I'm Christian), but I am fond of Greco-Roman and assorted other mythologies, thus the endless references in this chapter and others. I read a lot, take Latin, and watch Star Trek, OK? Therefore I learn weird and generally useless stuff and cobble together theories about the structure of destiny and the universe.

**Afterword: **I started this story for two reasons. First, simply to bring Kenshin face to face with himself, because I thought that would be interesting. Second, to try to explain some of the psychological problems with Kenshin. The idea of having two sides to a soul is old, old, old, but I wanted to work with it anyway. I felt like taking a shot at explaining Kenshin's dual nature. As you can doubtless see, sometimes I have to get _VERY _inventive to get what I want. I have to say that this was my hardest story to write so far, but possibly my best. (Now, note I'm saying this _before_ I really get into _Uneven Odds_. Why do I _do_ things like that?) Somewhere between walking in circles on the track talking to myself and actually setting words to Word, something went wrong. Believe me, all this sounded grand (and totally different) when I didn't have to write anything, and there are probably some really good psychobabble elements that got lost. The Rurouni/Battousai psychological element is an interesting part of Kenshin's character, and I like to think about it when I don't have to write about it. This is one of my stories that I'm genuinely pleased with. Thank you for reading: I hope you enjoyed _The Stretch in the Strings._


	9. Bonus Chapter 0, Destiny and Doomsday

**SURPRISE!**

**Super Extra Bonus Material Ultra-Excuse: **This is not really a chapter or even an epilogue. Instead, it's a poem I wrote for school, prompted with the word 'dizzy', which ended up suiting this story right down to the ground. I spent about ten minutes writing it, and about another ninety tweaking the meter. Try reading it out loud, because I'm still not sure it works. And after all that work, the literary-magazine contest was cancelled, so I thought I'd share it with you, as at least one person asked about an epilogue. (It's still not an epilogue!)

**Disclaimer:** Any gratuitous _Sandman_ influence is totally coincidental. This poem is copyright to me effective now, if not yesterday.

**Bonus Chapter 0: Destiny and Doomsday**

_Can I spin the threads of doomsday and be touched by what I see if the stuff that it's composed of cannot ever touch with me? Can I look into the future and be struck by what I know? Can I see into the days gone past and still withstand the blow?_

_If I spin a dream of time gone by will it always pull me in? And if I am not the weaver's loom then must I be the one to spin? Am I dream or am I dreamer and do nightmares ever die? Must I face a darkened future from a shattered crystal eye?_

_If the world is crushed and broken will I stand here all the same? Can I be just a player and not be part of the game? Do the hands and feet that move me do so by my own design? As I weave the threads of other lives is someone weaving mine?_

_If I am but a shadow then who else is casting me? If I look into the darkness then what can I hope to see? And if I am just the spinner and I watch the wheels spin and I become too dizzy will the pattern pull me in?_

_Can I escape the weaving that I've set about us all and if we're sinking ever lower do we have as far to fall? When I look into the shadows are the shadows looking back? And at what point do the followers become the hunting pack?_

_If there's a purpose to the pattern it evades my desperate glance for the path the weaving takes is not by me but up to chance, so the shape behind the shaping yet remains a mystery but it's evident at first look that no creature wanders free._

_Entrenched within the threads that cross the planes of time and space we act as if our actions have no past or future trace. The effects of your decision tug other lives and other strings despite your clouded viewpoint on such universal things._

_Spinning out beneath my fingers weaves the web that holds all lives as they endlessly endure frantic leaps and desperate dives and I watch the middle distance lest I look and really _see_—in the fear just my reflection will be what looks back at me._

_

* * *

_Thank you for your attention. This is Le'letha, signing out. 


End file.
